Parliamentary Elections Of December Research Articles

Pandemic populism: COVID-19 and the rise of the Nationalist AUR party in Romania

Many Central and Eastern European countries elected nationalist parties after the collapse of communism: a phenomenon often attributed to a combination of socioeconomic crisis and political instability. In 2010s, after the decay of other nationalist parties, Romania was seen as an exception to this rule, but the Covid-19 pandemic times have witnessed the rapid rise of a new nationalist party: the AUR (the Alliance for the Union of Romanians). Parliamentary elections in December 2020 saw this new political force gain 9.1% of the vote. Whereas previous nationalist parties in post-Communist Romania tended to appeal to more senior/elderly voters, there is evidence that the AUR vote is strong amongst men under the age of 35 who are educated to an elementary or high school level. This paper uses national electoral data, media analysis, and in-depth interviews with young, educated people to explore the spatial distribution of AUR support, the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has assisted the party's rise to prominence, and attitudes amongst university students to both the style and content of their politics. The paper concludes that the AUR offer a potent mix of old nationalism, religious faith, traditional family values and new ideological elements, such as environmentalism, anti-globalization, and anti-government critique to create a self-consciously 'alternative' political rhetoric. This is presented via new channels (especially social media) in a deliberately opportunistic, controversial, and spectacular manner. However, our investigation suggests that neither the content nor the style of this politics has widespread appeal among the more educated younger participants to the interview.

Brexit and Britain’s Changing Constitution

The Brexit saga which culminated in the sweeping victory of the Conservative Party in the parliamentary elections of December 2019 and the British withdrawal from the European Union the following months caused a major upheaval in the relationship between Britain’s main constitutional actors, especially between the government and the judiciary. In the course of the long-winded and acrimonious Brexit debate, the courts were repeatedly asked to intervene at critical junctures of the withdrawal process, first to secure a central role for Parliament in discussing and approving the terms of withdrawal and then to protect Parliament against attempts by the government to curtail and render ineffective this role through the questionable use of its prerogative powers. This development reached its climax with the UK Supreme Court’s judgment of 24 September 2019 on the unlawfulness of the prorogation of Parliament decided by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister in the run-up to Brexit, an unprecedented interference by the courts with the exercise of prerogative powers in the name of a functioning parliamentary democracy. While the reasoning of the Court does not appear entirely convincing, there can be no doubt that the ruling was crucial in upholding the central role of Parliament in the Brexit negotiations and, by implication, of the authority of the courts which had defined that role at the beginning of the negotiations. That the Supreme Court felt it necessary to take the unprecedented step of confronting the executive over the use of its prerogative powers in a highly polarized political debate also demonstrates the extent to which the political consensus which in former times had underpinned the functioning of Britain’s flexible constitutional democracy has broken down as a result of the Brexit debate, and the divisions it has engendered within Britain’s political class and in the public at large. This gives rise to the concern that the reforms announced by the Conservative government following its sweeping victory in the parliamentary elections of December 2019 will destroy any progress which had been made in the UK prior to the Brexit referendum towards a modern practice of parliamentary majority government based on incomplete but genuine checks and balances.

Romanian Rezist Protest. How Facebook Helps Fight Political Corruption

Immediately after the parliamentary elections in December 2016, the Social Democratic Party wants to amend the criminal legislation and pardon through an revolting ordinance, which caused a third wave of protests in post-December Romania. The core of the protests was made of social activists who held the position of network nodes, had previous experience and acted as rallying coagulant factors in the January-February 2017 events. In the present study, we focused our attention only on the online community: Corruption kills (in Romanian: Coruptia ucide), this being the oldest and most active in the Romanian social media. We wanted to show to what extent the representatives of this community managed to: a) increase the number of fans (involved) who supported the cause of the anti-corruption protests; and b) how Facebook was used as an interactive communication tool for users between January and February 2017. The Corruption Kills Community was perceived as a powerful tool of organization and rallying in the 2017 protest.

Konst och politik under Putin

Lena.Jonson@ui.se Abstract: Art and Politics under Putin What role can culture play in mass protests? How important a factor was culture for the 100,000 people who took to the Moscow streets following the parliamentary elections in December 2011? In this article I argue that values and perceptions undergo changes long before social eruptions take place, changes that are reflected and expressed in culture before being articulated in political terms. I discuss the role of contemporary art in Russian society during the 2000s and the mind-liberating function of Russian art during these years of reconfiguring the sensory landscape, exposing shifts in the official discourse, and in some cases as a substitute for politics. I argue that art contributed to a process of subjectivation in the words of Jacques Ranciere.

National autocratization and the survival of sub-national democracy: Evidence from Russia’s parliamentary elections of 2011

Sub-national political regimes play an important role in democratization. The article investigates the impact of the levels of sub-national democracy established in the 1990s through the early 2000s on the outcomes of national elections with a primary focus on the recent parliamentary elections in December 2011 in Russia. These elections came to play a very important role in the recent political history of Russia as a turning point, indicating whether democracy in the country was alive or dead. This article analyzes regional variations in voting in 2011. The article investigates the path-dependent nature of regional democracy in Russia in 2011 by using originally collected data from the regional electoral results. This article investigated whether the variety of regional political regimes that emerged and were established in the 1990s survived the centralization and regional institutional homogenization of the 2000s. We show that, despite of the centralization policy of Putin’s federal government, regions with different political regimes in the 1990s still behaved very differently in 2011. The analysis demonstrated that the institutional homogenization implemented by Putin’s government across the regions did not result in equally homogenous support for the central government across regions.

Zhirinovskii as a Fascist: Palingenetic Ultra-Nationalism and the Emergence of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia in 1992-93

In May 1994, Russian newspaper Izvestiia published an article called A Stance on Villains: From National-Patriots Comes Biggest Threat for written by former acting Russian Prime-Minister and democratic leader Egor Gaidar (1956-2009). The article dealt with Vladimir Zhirinovskii, chairman of so-called Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) which had won first post-Soviet Russian multi-party parliamentary elections in December 1993 (22.92%). Gaidar (1994) accused Zhirinovskii of being, among others, a populist and a the most popular fascist leader of Russia. In summer 1994, Zhirinovskii took Gaidar, with reference to these two classifications, to court for libel. The Tver InterMunicipal Court agreed with Zhirinovskii that Gaidar's labelling of LDPR-leader is slanderous, imposed a fine of US$250 on both Gaidar and

Building Trust amidst Corruption in Bangladesh

Bangladesh's parliamentary elections in December 2008 witnessed a landslide victory for an alliance led by Sheikh Hasina's Awami League following two years of a caretaker government backed by the military. The country's beleaguered population faced the twin challenges of natural disasters and pervasive poverty. One of the key factors influencing trust in the government of Bangladesh is stability, which has been in short supply because of confrontational politics between the two largest parties and accompanying violence. This paper considers efforts to rebuild trust by examining the work of a social movement, Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), at two levels: strengthening the pillars of the national integrity system (with a specific focus on parliament), and holding public bodies to account for corrupt practice in delivering key services. People's experiences of services delivered through schools, hospitals and local government have resulted in a complete collapse in trust in public bodies. The commitment of the democratically elected government to tackle corruption at all levels will be a key determinant of whether trust and stability can emerge from the volatility of Bangladesh's politics.

Russian Democracy in Eclipse: What the Polls Tell Us

Abstract: Some think that the failure of the democratic parties during parliamentary elections in December 2003 and undisputed dominance of President Putin’s supporters on political arena mean the demise of the hopes of establishment in Russia of a democratic system, in the very least — for the foreseeable future, for 50 or 100 years. Until recently out of all the post-Soviet transformations political pluralism and multi-party system received the lowest grades in public opinion. Democracy attributes that emerged in Russia with the advent of changes did not include citizens’ active participation and responsibility. The curtailment of political pluralism which started with President Putin’s coming to power and which became obvious after 2003-2004 elections did not meet with serious resistance. During Putin’s first presidential term the depolitization of the political arena in the country took place. To the extent the political constituent is returning into public life the democracy mechanisms will also develop.

The village votes: The December 1999 elections in Tatarstan's Pestretsy district

The Russian parliamentary elections of December 1999 were conducted with varying degrees of democratic reliability in different parts of Russia. In Tatarstan, with its own constitution and electoral regulations that differ substantially from those of the Russian Federation, the elections were conducted with less than complete adherence to the principles of democratic procedure. In particular, a range of features of the old Soviet‐style electoral process were in evidence. This was particularly the case in rural constituencies observed by the authors, including examples of sharp practices to trick the voters into supporting particular candidates or parties. The tardy publication of the results led to cynicism on the part of observers, and, although the complexity of the process ‐ with several elections taking place simultaneously ‐ partly explains the delay, the effective control over proceedings on the ground by regional and local politicians thwarted the intent of the admirable federal election legislation.

Developments in Russian voting behaviour: 1993 and 1995 compared

Election surveys from the parliamentary elections of December 1993 and December 1995 reveal a high level of electoral volatility, which is explained in terms of general problems of party consolidation in post‐communist conditions and further conditions specific to Russia. Continuities and changes in the social basis of the party vote between the two parliamentary elections have been explained, together with voting patterns, in terms of the influence of party programmes, campaign effects and the influence of charisma or clientelism. Information on turnout suggests that Russia remains a country where the poorer and more excluded sections of society are drawn into electoral participation in relatively great proportions. The general volatility in voting behaviour weakens the prospects for democratic consolidation and strengthens the drift to semi‐authoritarian government.

Imperial legacies and democratic prospects: Max Weber'sThe Russian Revolutions in historical perspective

The Russian Communist Party's startling gains in the parliamentary elections of December 1995 have raised fundamental questions about Rus sia's political future. What are the possibilities for constitutional govern ment, liberal democracy, and market reform in the coming months and years? Who are the supporters of reform in Russia? Do they have the eco nomic and political resources to overcome centuries of autocratic and bu reaucratic rule and a citizenry little accustomed to free enterprise, individual accountability, and political independence? Such questions led the eminent German sociologist Max Weber to learn enough Russian in three months to critique an array of party pro grams and constitutional projects stemming from the 1905 Revolution and the introduction of parliamentary government in Russia in 1906. Four of Weber's essays on Russia are available in English for the first time in the book under review, The Russian Revolutions, translated and edited by Gor don C. Wells and Peter Baehr. The two major essays, "Bourgeois Democ racy in Russia" (1906) and "Russia's Transition to Pseudo-constitutionalism" (1906), are published here in abridged translations. This is particularly un fortunate in the case of "Bourgeois Democracy in Russia," not only because the textual flow is interrupted, but also because key sections of the German original on the agrarian issue of 1906 are missing or paraphrased. The other two, much shorter essays, "Russia's Transition to Pseudo-democracy" and "The Russian Revolution and the Peace" (both published in 1917) are re produced in their entirety in the book. This review essay will analyze the historical accuracy of Weber's in sights and predictions concerning Russia's political and constitutional de velopment and place The Russian Revolutions in the context of some of the current scholarship and debates over late Imperial Russia and, to a much