Local Voters Research Articles

Paying for School Finance Reforms: How States Raise Revenues to Fund Increases in Elementary-Secondary Education Expenditures

This study investigates how individual states raise revenue to pay for elementary-secondary education spending following school finance reforms (SFRs). We identify states that increased and sustained education expenditures after reform, search for legislative statutes that appropriated more education spending, and assess how policymakers funded the SFRs. Our results show that state legislatures increase investments in education by increasing tax revenue streams, such as sales and excise taxes, and by taking over property tax collections. Considering these results, we discuss that increased state investment in education should be accompanied by a policy mechanism to distribute state aid equitably to districts. Moreover, policymakers should consider local voters’ preferences when implementing SFR policies, as tax increases may reduce local fiscal effort for education.

How cross-pressured local politicians choose government loyalty over local voters’ preferences. Lessons from a survey experiment in Norway

ABSTRACT This study explores how local politicians act when they are torn between local voters’ views and their own views or the party line. Against the background of a recent municipal amalgamation reform in Norway that reduced the number of municipalities from 428 to 356, we conducted a survey experiment where the local representatives (N = 2,013) were treated with different outcomes from a hypothetical municipal referendum about a potential amalgamation. The results show that local officials representing the government parties are less likely to change their voting behaviour if the voters have view different position on the merger than the representative. They have strong incentives to show loyalty to government reform based on both an individual career prospect and from a multilevel governance framework. Unsurprisingly, we find that if voters and representatives share their views on the reform, the representatives will vote in line with the voters.

Understanding Local Control in the Wake of State Adult-Use Cannabis Liberalization: A Content Analysis of State Statutes

Much has been written about the unique Federalist aspects of cannabis legalization. However, there has been comparatively little published literature about evolving state-local relationships regarding the cannabis industry. In this paper, we examine the state-local relationship and ask: To what extent do local governments control the production, distribution, or use of recreational cannabis under the state statutes? Did state statutes empower or restrict local governments? How much variation exists among states? This study used content analysis of state statutes with an inductive approach to answer these questions. Our results in this paper speak both to the diversity in state structure related to local governments and the newer models of the local governmental role that have spread in recent decades. Some states empowered local voters and governments to decide the time, place, and manner of recreational cannabis, while other states with more centralized functions have instead chosen to empower state agencies with the exclusive authority to license and regulate legal cannabis market participants.

The protest voting behaviour among local voters in the 2020 Surakarta mayoral election

This research explores the protest voting phenomenon in the Surakarta, Indonesia, mayoral election in response to political oligarchy. It uses a qualitative method, and the data analysis uses NVivo 12 Plus software. The findings reveal that the protest voting movement in the Surakarta mayoral election occurred as an effort to resist political parties. The protest vote made ballots invalid, showing no trust in candidates. Political parties practiced oligarchy by jointly endorsing the president's active son as a candidate. The parties had no initiative in bringing up alternative candidates due to the pragmatism of powers. Then, this political oligarchy became headline news. This research implies that public trust in political parties as instruments of democracy has increasingly degraded due to the parties’ pragmatic behavior. Moreover, voters have understood that oligarchic practices must be resisted in order to select ideal leaders.

Turnout, government performance and localism in contemporary by-elections

ABSTRACT Pored over by the media and used as crucial testing grounds for new candidates and campaign techniques by political parties, by-elections – or special elections – are comparatively under-studied in contemporary academic analyses. These elections, held outside the normal election cycle enable local voters to replace a departing representative, but the way in which they vote has often been dismissed as being driven by national factors. In the British case, despite the attention such contests bring, understandings of the way in which people vote in contemporary by-elections are based largely on data from over forty years ago. This article represents a substantial updating of the literature on by-elections, using data on 148 contests from the British context to examine whether pre-existing assumptions from the literature hold: namely the importance of national and local factors. It finds that by-elections no longer represent useful routes by which defeated MPs can re-enter Parliament. For both turnout and party vote share at these contests, a combination of local contextual and national factors impact by-election results, whereas contest specific factors such as having a local candidate only make a difference in a few cases.

РУССКИЕ ПАРТИИ ЛАТВИИ ПОТЕРЯЛИ ПОДДЕРЖКУ МЕСТНЫХ ИЗБИРАТЕЛЕЙ: ПРИЧИНЫ И ПОСЛЕДСТВИЯ (К ИТОГАМ ЛАТВИЙСКИХ ПАРЛАМЕНТСКИХ ВЫБОРОВ 2022 Г.)

The article is an analysis of reasons for the loss of support by the so-called “Russian parties of Latvia” from local voters following the results of the parliamentary election in the country held on October 1, 2022. The analysis of the evolution of those parties, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union went through a number of stages in their development, both successful and not very successful, is presented. The paper notes the reasons why it was in Latvia that the Russian parties became quite popular among voters in Latvia, especially in Riga and a number of other major Latvian cities. It gives profiles of two leading parties:the Social Democratic party “Consent” and the Russian Union of Latvia party. It also presents results of the participation of those parties in the election of deputies to the European Parliament (since 2004), the Latvian Saeima (Seim) of the V–ХIV convocations and local authorities. The reasons for the unsuccessful performance of the Social Democratic party “Consent” and the Russian Union of Latvia party at the last parliamentary election on October 1, 2022 are revealed and the prospects for their further participation in the political life of the country are noted, taking into account the fact that the parties remain supporters of preserving good-neighborly relations between Russia and Latvia.

Intervention in South African municipalities: Dangers and remedies

South Africa’s Constitution guarantees municipal autonomy; at the same time it enjoins the different elements of the state to co-ordinate their efforts through ‘co-operative government’ and, in conjunction with legislation, it under some circumstances permits (or even requires) provincial and national government to intervene in local government affairs to secure effective government and oversight. These powers of intervention, justified by reference to s 139 of the Constitution, range from disciplining errant councillors to the forced dissolution of non-performing municipalities. Some welcome such intervention as a counterweight to local-level corruption and inefficiency, but in a partisan environment, especially where different spheres are controlled by different parties or coalitions accountable to distinctive electorates, these powers of intervention are, we argue, open to political abuse. This abuse is likely to become more prevalent as unstable local coalition governments become more common, providing more pretexts for intervention and opportunities for councillors in political minorities to subvert their own councils in the hope of inviting intervention by higher-tier actors associated with their own party. In line with the 2021 Constitutional Court case censuring the dissolution of Tshwane Municipality by the Gauteng government, we argue for restricting grounds for intervention, especially more radical forms of intervention. As far as possible, the task of removing corrupt and inefficient local councils and councillors should be left to local voters.

Local voters have their reasons. Mapping voting motives in local elections in Belgium

AbstractVoting motives are one of the most studied but still much contested question in political science. There has been much less concern at the local level although two main tendencies can be discerned. Some consider local elections as second order political contests. Others emphasize place‐bound patterns in voting motives. Still, more research beyond those theoretical presumptions is needed to empirically determine motives for the local vote. Therefore, this paper aims to address two questions: (RQ1) Which types of motives do voters attribute to their choice in local elections? (RQ2) What explains similarities and differences in RQ1? To answer these questions, we draw on the data of the Belgian Local Elections Study 2018 in which respondents were invited to answer an open‐ended question about their voting motives for the local elections. Voting in local elections does not appear to be of second order: voters predominantly have general and specific place‐bound reasons.

Strategies of the Party Selectorate: The Two-Level Game in District Selections in Germany’s Mixed Member Electoral System

The article investigates how the opportunity structure and contextual factors influence the selectorates’ strategies in the process of candidate selection. The article argues that these strategies are an under-researched but important explanatory and dynamic link between the parties’ goals and context factors of candidate selection on the one side and the adopted selection criteria and the outcome of candidate selection on the other side. Based on a mixed-methods design, the study scrutinizes the selectorates’ strategies at district selections in Germany’s mixed-member electoral system. The analysis reveals that the local selectorates adopt the traditional inward oriented selection criteria to find the best candidate for the local party branch if the district seat is safe for the party. If, however, the seat is not safe, the selectorates prioritize the electoral goal over the local party organizational goal and strategically adapt the selection criteria to the opportunity structure. By considering both local inter-party competition and regional intra-party competition, they either take up a local voters’ perspective or anticipate the selection criteria of the state party lists in order to increase the chances for a seat in parliament. Thus, due to the mixed-member electoral system, the prevalence of dual candidacies, and decentralized candidate selection methods, intra-party selection in German districts is a two-level game.

The Incoherence of Institutional Reform: Decentralization as a Structural Solution to Immediate Political Needs

Institutional reforms are structural changes in the rules and norms of authority, with effects that are long-term and unpredictable on government, politics, and society. But leaders may undertake them to solve unrelated, discrete, short-term political problems. Understanding the latter is key to understanding the characteristics of many real reforms, and hence their fate. We introduce the concept of instrumental incoherence and use it to construct a theory of decentralization where reform is motivated by orthogonal objectives. We show that reformers’ incentives map onto the specifics of reform design via their side effects, not their main effects, which in turn lead to the medium- and long-term consequences eventually realized. We characterize downwardly accountable decentralization, which ties the hands of the center to empower local voters, vs. upwardly accountable decentralization, which ties the hands of local government to empower the center. We use these ideas to explain highly divergent outcomes in two extreme cases, Bolivia and Pakistan, using detailed, original evidence. Our analysis likely extends to a broader class of reforms where the incentives of agents pursuing a change, and the effects of that change, are highly asymmetric in time and dimension.

The Care Children Deserve

The Care Children Deserve

The Electoral Paradox of Party Institutionalisation: The Case of PKS in Eastern Indonesia

ABSTRACT What caused the surprising electoral success of an Islamist party in one of Indonesia’s most Catholic regions, and why was this success short-lived? This article argues that in Ngada district on Flores Island in 2014 the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) deftly mobilised local voters not because of its own organisational and programmatic discipline but because of its “project of commonness”, or adaptation to prevailing local patterns of personalistic local electoral competition. The party’s growing popularity in Ngada, however, paradoxically fell after it sought to build solid and coherent relations with the electorate in preparation for the subsequent election. The case of the PKS in Flores thus suggests that under certain conditions, in which voter–party linkages are highly fragmented and cleavage-based politics remain undeveloped, party institutionalisation can harm electoral performance.

Youth Can Promote Marine Debris Concern and Policy Support Among Local Voters and Political Officials

Many of the most sweeping social movements throughout history have been youth-led, including those related to environmental challenges. Emerging research suggests youth can build environmental concern among parents via intergenerational learning, in some cases overcoming socio-ideological differences that normally stymie attempts at collective action. What has not been studied is the potential for youth to also influence adults outside their immediate families. This study based in North Carolina, USA, explores the potential of today's young people as environmental change-agents in their communities on the topic of marine debris. Specifically, this evaluation examines responses from voters and local officials after participating in youth-led civic engagement events. After engaging with a youth-led civic engagement event, voters, and local officials completed a retrospective pretest survey that asked questions about levels of marine debris concern and their likelihood of supporting a local marine debris ordinance. Young people encouraged both concern and policy support among both voters and officials, and that concern and policy support increased independently of whether adults were voters or officials, liberals or conservatives, or knew the students personally. Further, participation in the youth-led engagement event reduced political differences in marine debris concern. This study suggests youth can play a critical role addressing marine debris challenges by promoting support for marine debris management policy, and doing so across political barriers.

The Results of Exit Polls in Kansas to Verify Voting Machine Counts in the November 2016 Election

Abstract Citizens’ exit polls are performed by local voters to verify the official reported election results. Five citizens’ exit polls were run in southeast Kansas during the Nov 8th 2016 election. These exit polls were designed specifically to verify computer generated vote counts and run solely by volunteer labor, all local citizens who were willing to put in the necessary hours on Election Day to conduct the poll and later, to count the results by hand. These exit polls were able to obtain high participation rates resulting in the ability to detect small yet statistically significant differences. All five polling stations surveyed show evidence of multiple statistical anomalies in both the pattern and size of the errors between the official results and exit poll results although biases were not uniformly oriented across sites. The small discrepancies found in the studied races were insufficient to alter the outcomes. Non-response bias and unintentional errors were evaluated as potential causes; those explanations were plausible in some but not all cases. These results show a pattern of discrepancies between the exit polls and computer counted results displaying consistent bias within sites. This would be an expected outcome of a deliberate manipulation of the computer results. While this data doesn’t conclusively prove election interference and manipulation of votes counts, it should be taken seriously as a sign of such interference. Doubts about the accuracy of the reported results are appropriate unless other plausible explanations for the discrepancies can be found.

The economic effects of immovable property taxation: A review of the Italian experience

In this paper we review the results in the empirical literature on the effects of immovable property taxation reforms occurred in Italy in the last decades. We preliminary resume the recent history of property taxation reforms and discuss why Italy represents a good experimental laboratory to identify their effects on economic outcomes. We then review the empirical contributions regarding the impact of the ICI, introduced in 1993, and of the IMU, introduced in 2012, on local firms' investments, property values and households' consumption. We finally resume the findings related to the political economy of residential property taxation with respect to the incentives of local authorities, tax avoidance and voters' reaction

The Political Economy of Fiscal Decentralization under the Islamic Republic of Iran

AbstractA key challenge for democratizing local government is the extent to which local policy is responsive and accountable to local voters’ preferences. The goal of this paper is to assess the potential relevance of this thesis in the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) by focusing on the fiscal dimensions of elected local government first established in 1999. In this paper, I present descriptive data and empirical analysis to provide a comprehensive picture of fiscal decentralization and municipal finances under the IRI, which up till now has been a “black box.” To peer inside, I present the results of a unique dataset on almost ninety cities gathered over an eight‐year period covering the first phase of decentralization (1998–2006). I find that elected municipalities in Iran possess limited fiscal and legal autonomy on both the revenue and expenditure sides. The findings provide support for the broader thesis that the structure of local government finance has acted to thwart the Islamic reformists’ project of local democratization and strengthening local government accountability.

Revolution in the Town Halls: The Formation of Czechoslovakia, the Battle for the Town Halls and Power Transition in the Municipal Authorities of Moravian Towns after 1918

The study deals with the process of a power transition in Moravian nationally mixed towns after the First World War. The formation of Czechoslovakia was accompanied not only by the takeover of central political authorities, but necessarily also by a power transition at the regional level. The study takes particular note of the complicated process of the taking control of municipal councils in key Moravian towns, which were, until the formation of Czechoslovakia, in most cases under the decisive influence of the German bourgeoisie. Unlike in the Austro-Hungarian era, when the question of the composition of self-governments had been entirely in the hands of the local voters, the interest of the central institutions of the new state as well as of the political parties was now reflected in municipal affairs. In the process of the power transfer, the merging of municipalities played a very important role, being carried out in the post-war reality to serve as a means of solving the complex national-political situation in nationally mixed areas.

Centuries of Ballot-Box Transportation Planning in Los Angeles

Since 1980, many have marveled at Los Angeles’“innovation” of funding transportation through ballot measures that are raising billions for transportation improvements. In fact, historically much transportation infrastructure in Los Angeles was financed by local voter-approved revenues. It began in 1868 with a narrowly approved $225,000 bond measure to build the region’s first railroad, followed by an 1876 measure to grant the Southern Pacific railroad a $602,000 subsidy to entice the company to route its transcontinental line through the region. Angeleno voted on an additional 23 different transportation-related ballot measures between the passage of the Good Roads Act (1908) and the end of the New Deal (1937)—a key period of Los Angeles’ history that saw dramatic population increase and with it political contention over the direction of the region’s growth. Overall, these early transportation measures fared well with voters. Of the 25 transportation-related ballot measures in Los Angeles County from 1860 to 1960, only seven (28%) failed to pass, a far better record than nontransportation measures of which 21 of 31 (71%) went down to defeat. Regardless of whether, as some contend, Los Angeles missed a golden opportunity to create the backbone of an effective transit system that would have reduced the need for automobiles and spending many billions on freeways, it is clear that local voters have long faced competing visions for the future of Los Angeles and arguments over whether to fund transportation systems to serve these visions.

Competing Principals? Legislative Representation in List Proportional Representation Systems

AbstractWe develop a new framework to study legislative representation in list proportional representation (PR) systems. Our model studies a legislator's incentives to balance the competing interests of party leaders and local voters under a variety of list PR systems. We consider open and closed lists, as well as flexible lists—in which both rank assignments and preference votes determine the order in which seats are filled. We find that more flexibility can worsen local representation. List flexibility also acts as a key mediator of the effect of voter partisanship on party cohesion. And, our analysis reveals that higher district magnitude encourages representatives to toe the party line under all ballot systems.

POLA PENGUNDIAN DALAM PILIHAN RAYA UMUM KE-14 (PRU-14) 2018 MALAYSIA DI KAWASAN BANDAR DAN LUAR BANDAR

The results of the 2018 General Election in Malaysia show interesting and varied political dynamics based on issues, leadership, campaign strategies, winning and defeat factors, polling patterns, and also location. Hence the purpose of writing this article is to analyze the trend of polling in GE 2018 based on urban and rural areas according to 222 parliamentary constituencies in the country. The writing of this article is produced through the analysis of the GE13 2018 decision-making data for the Parliamentary constituencies as well as the in-depth analysis of secondary information from mainstream media and social media directly involved in the GE 2018. The findings show that almost all urban areas were won by Pakatan Harapan (PH) and some were won by PAS, in urban areas in the East Coast region of Peninsular Malaysia. The rural areas in the majority of Malays areas are dominated by UMNO/BN and PAS in Kelantan, Terengganu, and also rural parts of Kedah. There are also rural areas won by either BN, PAS, and PH with a slight majority because of the split of the three-party blocks. This is due to the different demographic segments of the voters either by local voters, young voters, outsiders, and even higher educated voters. Hence, the pattern of voting by geographical location in the GE 2018 is very interesting and compositing to be studied and deserves to be taken into account by the concerned parties, especially political parties, governments, and political researchers in order to be a solution to produce rational political thinking and to follow the current trends to care for the well-being of the common people.