Mayoral Candidates Research Articles

Do green parties affect local waste management policies?

We explore whether mayors supported by pro-environmental parties enhance local environmental outcomes compared to their non-environmental counterparts. We study close elections within a regression discontinuity design and find a notable rise in recycling rates in Italian municipalities governed by pro-environmental coalitions. This uptick becomes far less pronounced when adopting broader criteria to define green mayoral candidates. Crucially, the enhanced recycling rates are not realized through augmented budgets for environmental initiatives or waste collection, but rather are primarily attributed to the implementation of local policies, such as on-call waste collection and the establishment of waste collection centers.

More Electoral Competition Without More Voter Participation: Quasi-Experimental Test of a Term Limit Reform in Ecuador

Term limits are theoretically expected to boost voter participation which has been confirmed by multiple empirical examinations. This study uses a robust causal assessment within the difference-in-differences framework to evaluate this hypothesis. It leverages an exogenous 2018 term limit reform in Ecuador which prohibited some, but not all, incumbent mayors from running in elections. Contrary to expectations, the results indicate null findings: the adoption of term limits has neither increased turnout, nor depressed the casting of blank and spoiled ballots (alternative indicators of voter engagement under compulsory voting). This is puzzling given that the reform impacted the electoral competition by significantly increasing the number of mayoral candidates in the newly open-seat contests. Two possible solutions to the puzzle of the null findings are presented with implications for understanding the scope conditions for the effect of term limits on voter participation.

Implementation of Institutional Da'wah Values in the Political Communication Process at the Bandung City General Election Commission

This research finds different points of view in the political communication process carried out by the Bandung City KPU during the selection process for Bandung mayoral candidates. This research was conducted to analyze the good values within the KPU institution from an institutional da'wah perspective. By using a subjective interpretive approach, qualitative methods, and descriptive case study research, this research describes the problems that occurred at the 2018 Bandung Mayor candidate stage as material for improvement for the 2024 Bandung Mayor election as well as mapping political communication da'wah that can be developed by the City General Election Commission Bandung in the framework of finding solutions to problems at the nomination stage. The results of the research concluded that the nomination stage in the 2018 Bandung Mayor election had five issues, so genuine efforts and policies were needed from the Bandung City General Election Commission to improve the nomination stage for the 2024 Bandung Mayor election. One of the efforts that can be made to deal with problems at the nomination stage is developing two political communication da'wah activities, namely the application of the shura method exemplified by Rasulullah SAW in internal political communication, both horizontally and vertically organizational and external political communication between the Bandung City General Election Commission and the citizens of Bandung, especially the prospective candidates for Mayor of Bandung in various forms of da'wah political communication, both face to face and media political communication to realize honest and fair elections.

Money in Electoral Campaigns: The Relationship between Money and Politics as a Cause of the Judicialization of Electoral Processes in Brazil

The electoral court is a specialized branch of the Brazilian judiciary that not only organizes and regulates elections in the country but also resolves conflicts between political actors involved in the electoral process. The (mis)use of money in electoral campaigns is one of the causes of the judicialization of electoral processes in Brazil. In fact, among many other reasons, such judicialization can occur when actors in the electoral process (candidates, parties, and party coalitions) are accused, either by their opponents and/or by the Electoral Public Prosecutor’s Office, of irregularities such as abuse of economic power, illegal fundraising or expenditure of electoral resources, electoral corruption, or falsification of the campaign’s accounting records. Through the study of electoral lawsuits filed between 2008 and 2016 against mayoral candidates, this work has two objectives: (i) to dimension the importance of the relationship between money and politics as a cause of the judicialization of electoral processes in Brazilian local elections and (ii) to characterize the candidates that appear as defendants in electoral lawsuits filed by that cause.

Framing ecological issues in local political contestations as part of political communication in the 2018 regional election

This paper discusses the practice of political communication carried out by regional head candidates in the City of Kediri in the 2018 local elections in East Java. This paper focuses on conducting in-depth tracking of the framing of ecological issues in campaign practices carried out by regional head candidates in the 2018 local elections. This study aims to gain an understanding and knowledge related to the political communication practices of regional head candidates in responding to ecological issues in political contestation locally in East Java. This research uses a descriptive qualitative approach that focuses on collecting data through interviews and documentation related to the political communication strategies of the 2018 Kediri mayoral candidates in communicating ecological issues to the public. The study results show that the political communication practices carried out by candidates in the 2018 regional elections have yet to make ecological issues a critical public issue. This is reflected in the campaign's content, which still focuses on socio-economic issues that prioritize aspects of infrastructure development for the community, not directing environmental conservation practices to support sustainable development.

Electoral rule and public sector efficiency: Some evidence from Italian municipalities

AbstractWe study the effect of Law 81/1993, which introduced a different rule for the election of mayors, on the technical efficiency of Italian cities over the period 1998–2006. Since 1993, municipalities below 15,000 inhabitants vote with a single‐ballot system, whereas cities above 15,000 inhabitants are subject to a double ballot. We first estimate the output‐oriented technical efficiency of municipalities through data envelopment analysis, and then we perform a regression discontinuity design analysis by exploiting the exogenous change in the electoral scheme at the 15,000 inhabitants cut‐off. We find evidence that municipalities voting under a double‐ballot rule show lower levels of efficiency—in terms of provision of public goods—compared with cities voting under a single‐ballot scheme, by about 6.5%. This effect is driven by inefficiencies registered in specific sectors, that is, police, education, and maintenance of roads. Furthermore, the overall lower efficiency of municipalities voting under runoff is related to the different level of educational attainment of elected mayors, whereas it is not driven by the features of Law 81/1993 relating to the number of lists forming a coalition in support of mayoral candidates and to disjoint votes.

Give me a Vote: How Nepalese Mayoral Candidates Perform Speech Acts on Facebook?

Background: Social media, particularly at the time of the election, are frequently used by politicians for communication with their voters. Among different social media, Facebook is the most popular media in Nepal. Objectives: In this context, the paper has analyzed how the eighteen mayoral candidates of the Local Election-2022 from six Metropolises of Nepal have performed different illocutionary speech acts while communicating with their voters through posts on Facebook. Methods: Developing a protocol, selected 394 posts of two candidates of the major political parties and one independent candidate from each metropolis are selected as data for analysis. The status updates on Facebook of these candidates from the day of their nomination to the election silence period before the voting day are collected for analysis. The taxonomy of illocutionary speech acts developed by Searle is taken as the theoretical base to analyze the collected written updates. Results: The study has found extreme use of assertive speech acts and occasional use of declarative speech acts in the status updates by the mayoral candidates. There are no fundamental differences between the winning and losing candidates regarding their culture of using or ignoring particular speech acts. Conclusions: Communicating the certainty or the inaccuracy of the proposition in the form of extreme assertive speech acts by the candidate indicates the usual reporting character of them rather than adopting other rational and expressive speech acts to move the audience. It also indicates that they perform different speech acts without being conscious of the inherent characteristics of the acts. The study supports scrutinizing the communication skills of the politicians of urban Nepal in terms of doing politics with words.

Mayoral elections and partisan dynamics in Africa’s local governments

ABSTRACT Enforcing party loyalty is particularly difficult in settings where parties are not strongly differentiated by policy or ideological platforms, as is the case in many African countries. Instead, the system of party nominations serves an important role in maintaining loyalty and discipline. Yet, direct mayoral elections at the subnational level affect these dynamics by expanding the range of positions that politicians can occupy, thereby creating opportunities for them to forge greater visibility within their party or enabling them to defect and create an independent political identity. Drawing on the case of Zambia, which shifted in 2016 from indirect to direct mayoral elections for its district councils, this article discusses how the change in electoral rules contributed to more independent mayoral candidates and growing intra-party frictions, especially among mayors governing large urban areas. Additional case studies from Senegal, which shifted to direct elections in 2022, and Mozambique, which reverted to indirect elections in 2018, further underscore the external validity of the analysis while refining its scope conditions. The article emphasizes that while political decentralization is often viewed as a mechanism for enhancing downwards accountability to citizens, it can also exert considerable impacts on party loyalty.

Bible, uniform, entrepreneurship, and fight against the “system”: the worldview of Bolsonarista mayoral candidates in Macapá in 2020

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo consiste na identificação dos principais elementos que compõem a cosmovisão das candidaturas mais claramente vinculadas ao bolsonarismo à Prefeitura de Macapá em 2020. A partir da realização de entrevistas semiestruturadas com os três candidatos e a candidata que, ao longo da campanha, buscaram vincular sua trajetória à imagem do Presidente da República, seus enunciados foram analisados e organizados em três campos semânticos principais: neoliberalismo, conservadorismo moral e retórica antissistema. A análise desses campos semânticos evidenciou dois elementos importantes: em primeiro lugar, a robusta coesão ideológica e discursiva do bolsonarismo, mesmo quando considerada sua manifestação local em um município distante, geográfica e institucionalmente, do centro hegemônico do país; e, em segundo lugar, o maior peso relativo dado a duas facetas da cosmovisão bolsonarista, o militarismo e o conservadorismo moral de corte pentecostal.

Judicial subversion: The effects of political power on court outcomes

Are politicians in power treated more leniently in court? We show that Brazilian mayoral candidates charged with misconduct are 65 percent less likely to be convicted if they narrowly win the election. Politicians play no direct role in the judges’ careers, suggesting that formal independence does not completely insulate the judiciary from political influence. The effect is driven by districts with few judges and by judges with higher career instability.

Demographic differences in understanding and utilization of ranked choice voting

AbstractObjectivesNew York City is the largest U.S. jurisdiction to use ranked choice voting (RCV). We examine New York and other U.S. cities using RCV to assess if there were different levels of understanding and utilization of RCV across demographic groups.MethodsWe placed items on a survey conducted during the 2021 New York City RCV election that had been included in two previous surveys of different U.S. cities using RCV.ResultsWe find higher levels of reported understanding and rates of ranking multiple candidates in NYC than in other jurisdictions. We find no systematic differences by race/ethnicity in terms of reported understanding of RCV in NYC or the other samples. We also find no systematic association between age and reported understanding of RCV. Respondents with more education were more likely to report understanding RCV in each sample. People of color were less likely to report ranking multiple mayoral candidates in NYC and California, and respondents with more education were more likely to report ranking in two samples.ConclusionsApart from these important differences in utilization, our search for race/ethnic differences largely produced null results, suggesting RCV may not produce bias in who engages with it.

Political Communication and Gender: An Analysis of Public’s Perceptions Toward the Election of the 2017 Mayoral Candidates of Banda Aceh

This research attempted to describe the public's perception toward political communication ofcertain gender in winning the mayoral election of Banda Aceh in 2017 and to find outpeople's perceptions on whether gender is able to influence the candidacy in winning themayoral election of Banda Aceh in 2017. This research was conducted by using qualitativemethod and took place in Banda Aceh. The process of retrieving data and information of theresearch is obtained from the review of literature. This research employed structured-interview on expert informants from the Independent Election Commission, the Head ofIslamic Shari'a Office of Banda Aceh and the voting community (male and female) selectedby using purposive sampling. The theory used in this research is the theory of socialcognition, a learning theory explaining the patterns of behavior. This theory was developedby Albert Bandura since 1960 and emphasized the tendency to imitate or emulate whatpeople see through the media or other people. There are interrelationships betweenindividuals, environment and behavior. In this case, the political communication carried outby the two mayor candidates of Banda Aceh stemmed a new problem since one of thecandidates was female. As the result, this issue triggered a controversy in the community interms of contradicting the teachings of Islamic Shari'a among candidates and within thecommunity regarding gender. In terms of political participation, women have been givenspecial proportion in both management of political parties and legislative candidacy (30%).Meanwhile, this arrangement is still not well-considered because there are no strict sanctionsfor political parties. In respect of sociological aspects, there are still many serious problems, starting from women's interest which is still low in the political sphere as well as theproblems of gender bias experienced by women. Furthermore, the urgency of women'srepresentation in the political sphere is hampered due to negative stereotypes towards womenand the level of patriarchal knowledge which still sticks on people's lives.

Hifz Al-Din (maintaining religion) and Hifz Al-Ummah (developing national integration): Resistance of Muslim youth to non-Muslim leader candidates in election

Resistance towards non-Muslim leaders emerged when the case of blasphemy against Islam was brought against Basuki Tjahya Purnama, known as Ahok, as the governor of DKI Jakarta at that time (DKI Jakarta is mostly inhabited by Muslims). The case of blasphemy committed by Ahok has triggered the resistance of Muslims towards non-Muslim candidates for the regional leader election. This study uses a cross-sectional design conducted by interviewing 1121 Muslim youths who participated in regional head elections in North Sumatra. Multivariate analysis in this study used a logistic regression test with JAPS 16 software. The results of this study indicate that Muslim youth in North Sumatra province have high resistance to non-Muslim candidates for regional heads (governor and mayor). Hifz Al-Din [maintaining religion] (p 0.001; Exp [β] = 2.505) is seen to affect the resistance of Muslim youth to non-Muslim governor candidates; Hifz Al-Din (p 0.001; Exp [β] = 2.053) is seen to affect the resistance of Muslim youth to non-Muslim mayoral candidates; Hifz Al-Ummah [developing national integration] (p = 0.001; [β] = 2.194) is seen to have influenced the resistance of Muslim youth to non-Muslim governor candidates; Hifz Al-Ummah (p = 0.011; Exp [β] = 1.800) affects the resistance of Muslim youth to non-Muslim mayoral candidates. Muslim youth have high resistance to non-Muslim leaders when participating in elections. Muslim youth are afraid that prospective non-Muslim leaders will make various policies that will make it difficult for Muslims to carry out various kinds of worship performed by Muslims.Contribution: This study is expected to provide information for non-Muslim leader candidates about the fear of Muslim youth against non-Muslim candidates for the regional leader election, especially regarding the policies to carry out worship for Muslims and to maintain the unity of the Ummah.

‘Whiny, Fake, and I Don't Like Her Hair’: Gendered Assessments of Mayoral Candidates

Municipal mayoral elections present a compelling puzzle: what happens when gendered stereotypes about level of government conflict with those about type of office? Although local politics is viewed as communal and more feminine, the mayoral office is a prominent, prestigious position of political leadership that voters may perceive as more masculine. We intervene by analyzing open-ended comments about 32 mayoral candidates from a survey of 14,438 municipal electors in eight Canadian cities. We argue gendered trait and issue stereotypes are embedded in voters’ assessments of mayoral candidates. We find no evidence that female candidates benefit from their perceived competence in local policy issues, and they experience backlash when they display the traits typically associated with strong leaders. We conclude that, even at the level of government frequently thought of as more open to women, female mayoral candidates are disadvantaged by an enduring association between masculinity and political leadership.

Can gender quotas break the glass ceiling? Evidence from Italian municipal elections

Do gender quotas promote the election of female mayors? I exploit the roll-out of three gender quota policies governing Italian municipal elections to answer this question. The quotas institute minimum legal levels of female representation in the lists of councilor candidates and in the municipal governments' executive bodies, but do not directly target mayoral positions. Therefore, their ability to promote female political leadership entirely depends on whether they induce a broader increase in female representation in municipal governments beyond that mechanically required by the law. Using event-study and regression discontinuity methods, I decompose the aggregate effects of the quotas into mechanical effects, driven by compliance with the law, and additional impacts, or “acceleration effects.” The reforms have increased the share of female politicians in the less senior government positions beyond the minimum legal level, but there is no evidence of effects on the mayoral position. I also find no evidence of effects on female mayoral candidacies or on electoral support for female mayoral candidates. I conclude that the acceleration effects produced by the quotas have been too weak to advance female political leadership in municipal governments.

Women’s Underrepresentation in German Politics—Reforms and Reform Needs Based on the Local Level

In Germany, the representation of women at all federal levels in parliament has been stagnating for decades. This is mainly due to the personalized proportional representation system and the inconsistent voluntary party quotas, some of which are not very binding. The objective of this research is to subject the German Politics to critical analysis from the perspective of women’s representation and participation at all levels of Government. The paper relied on secondary source of information viz. Journal articles etc. After Angela Merkel’s resignation, it became even clearer that the underrepresentation of women at the top of the government was even greater than in the parliaments. At municipal level, the proportion of women in mayoral offices in Germany stagnates at 10%. This is mainly because, firstly, the larger parties hardly have any women and, depending on the path, the mostly male incumbents are usually re-elected. If the major parties nominate female mayoral candidates, they are also in a difficult starting position. They either must compete against incumbents or in the diaspora of the parties, which significantly reduces the chances of an election victory. With institutional solutions such as term limits in mayoral elections and cumulation and splitting (open list election) combined with legal quotas for female candidates in parliamentary elections at all federal levels, the descriptive representation of women in German politics could be significantly increased.

Primary elections and electoral outcomes: evidence from the Spanish Socialist Party

Using a regression discontinuity design and primary elections to select Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) mayoral candidates as a case study, this paper investigates the causal link between primary elections and electoral outcomes. The results suggest that selecting the PSOE’s mayoral candidate through primary elections has no effect on the percentage of votes and total votes received by the PSOE’s candidate in local elections, the probability of gaining the mayorship and the local government’s stability. On the other hand, the results suggest that PSOE’s primary elections result in increased votes for competing political parties to the right of the PSOE and in reduced votes for competing parties to the left of the PSOE.

Self-selecting candidates or compelling voters: How organized crime affects political selection

Using data on mayoral candidates and elected mayors in Italian municipalities, this paper aims to unveil the mechanism underlying the evidence that organized crime lowers politicians’ quality. We exploit the dissolution of city governments for presumed mafia infiltration as an exogenous shock to the presence of organized crime in local politics. We implement a difference-in-differences methodology to test whether organized crime discourages qualified individuals to run for elections. Our results indicate that the active presence of organized crime does not prevent highly qualified candidates from running but does induce citizens to vote for less qualified ones. The identification of the channel through which organized crime influences local politics is important to better direct public intervention against mafia infiltration.

Representation in American Cities: Who Runs for Mayor and Who Wins?

Business leaders emerge as key players in canonical accounts of urban politics, but data limitations have hampered efforts to quantify their role in city politics. Drawing on an original dataset that includes gender, race, occupational, and political experience for over 3,500 mayoral candidates from 259 cities over fifty years, I document who runs for office and who serves as mayor, with a focus on candidates who are business owners and executives. Overall, the data indicate that mayors tend to be White and male with prior political experience and white-collar careers. Business owners and executives account for nearly one-third of the candidates in the sample, but I find no indication that they win elections at higher rates than other candidates overall. However, my results do suggest that business owners and executives have better electoral prospects in more conservative cities, especially those that hold nonpartisan elections.

Levels of Conceptualization and Municipal Politics: Replication in a New Context

Since Angus Campbell and colleagues introduced the Levels of Conceptualization (LoC) framework as a measure of political sophistication, only a very small number of scholars have applied this approach to understanding how electors view political actors. In 2008, Michael Lewis-Beck and colleagues replicated this foundational study and found similar results using much more recent data on American national elections. In this brief research report, we replicate the work of Lewis-Beck and colleagues in the Canadian municipal context. Using survey data from the Canadian Municipal Election Study, we make use of open-ended responses about attitudes towards mayoral candidates to conduct a qualitative examination of the manner in which survey respondents from eight Canadian cities view mayoral candidates. Despite the relative dearth of ideological cues at the local level, we nevertheless find that a noteworthy portion of the electorate views candidates in ideological terms. Like previous work on the subject, we find that high levels of conceptualization are positively associated with turnout, education, political knowledge, and ‘political involvement’.