Political Competition Research Articles

Complex Dynamic Analysis for a Rent-Seeking Game with Political Competition and Policymaker Costs

This paper investigates the dynamics of rent-seeking games that include political competition and policymaker cost model. The local asymptotic stability of multiple equilibrium points and Nash equilibrium points are studied. In the rent-seeking model, the existence and stability of Flip bifurcation and Neimark–Sacker bifurcation are examined, and the corresponding theorems and conditions are derived. The theoretical conclusions of the paper are verified by numerical simulations with different parameters. The simulation graphics show that the rent-seeking game model exhibits rich dynamic behaviors, such as multi-periodic orbits, Flip bifurcation, Neimark–Sacker bifurcation, and chaotic sets.

Cerpen-cerpen Lekra (1950—1965) sebagai strategi perjuangan politik PKI

This study aims to reveal the contents and objectives contained in Lekra's short stories, which were published in Harian Rakjat in 1950–1965. The data source for this research is in the form of short stories: Paman by L.S. Retno, Gambar Pemimpin by Saibun, Kebangunan di Kota Bengawan by Namikakanda, and Loper by Putu Oka. This research is qualitative, using library research methods. The results of the study show that these short stories are loaded with political interests of the PKI as part of the PKI's struggle to influence the masses so that the PKI succeeds in the political competition in Indonesia in 1950–1965. In addition, these short stories show that there is a close relationship between literature (Lekra), politics (PKI), and the media (Harian Rakjat). From this relationship, literature and the media at that time were under political control. Lekra as a cultural institution in Indonesia became a political tool for the PKI to influence the ideology of readers and its supporters, and the Harian Rakjat was used by the PKI as a medium for spreading it. Basically, both Lekra and Harian Rakjat were tools for realising PKI politics, and both were in positions facilitated by the PKI.

Paulo Freire and the praxis of liberation: Education, organization and ethics

The appropriation of Paulo Freire’s ideas by academic and educators of the West often reduces them to a pedagogical method. This article’s argument affirms that considering his contributions from a strictly pedagogic perspective would empty the educative act of its political content and, according to Freire, would make it as dominating as any other. The text is written in a close relationship with the words of Freire. It is recognized, in the discussion of the challenges we face if we intend to explore the possibilities of practicing a liberating education at the space of management schools, that it is always possible to make something to contradict the dominant and to open space for creativity and hope. In this situation, it necessarily includes the critique of management and its insertion in the process of cultural invasion. The aim is not to provide a conclusive contribution; it is an invitation to future dialogues that embrace Paulo Freire’s ideas mainly around themes such as organization, leadership and education, always keeping in mind the praxeology and the critical ethics that are at the fundament of his propositions.

Navigating The Storm: ASEAN's Strategy Amidst Two Major Powers

This study aims to analyze ASEAN's stance and approach, particularly in managing confrontational politics amidst major power competition, this article will also demonstrate ASEAN's attitudes and policies in navigating confrontational politics, including how ASEAN leverages its regional community norms to respond to such competition. Through this exploration, the author seeks to delve into the role and theoretical implications of ASEAN as a regional actor grappling with the management of political competition in the rapidly evolving East Asian and Indo-Pacific regionalism. The author used an impartial enmeshment concept and a descriptive qualitative method. The results showed that the intense geostrategic competition between China and the United States has placed ASEAN in a dilemma. ASEAN strives to maintain its centrality in the region by fostering fair, impartial, and neutral cooperation relationships. ASEAN bases its approach on the norms and principles of the organization, such as transparency, openness, inclusivity, good conflict management, and the importance of sovereignty and non-intervention (ASEAN Way). The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) is one policy that reflects ASEAN's efforts to build a new framework of cooperation based on its own rule in the region. However, this Southeast Asia organization faces several challenges that can threaten its position.
 Keywords— ASEAN, Indo-Pacific, Impartial, Enmeshment, Geostrategies

The power of price subsidies in Morocco

The Moroccan system of ‘compensation’ subsidises products that are deemed to be important for household purchasing power: butane gas, flour, bread, sugar, and fuel (until 2015). This article offers a historical sociology of this system, which was inaugurated during the colonial period in 1941 and which survived criticism from neoclassical economists working in international financial institutions. It demonstrates that the system’s resilience and the transformations it underwent can be analysed by treating it as a means of exercising power. Subsidies make it possible to involve private actors in governing social issues. It also helps to regulate economic and political rivalries and alliances through market interactions and competitive relationships, including around the King’s Palace. The administrative mechanisms used to calculate the subsidies and the retail prices also shape the relationships between operators in the various sectors, while allowing opaque and rentier management. In addition, despite being the subject of social demand, the compensation system has been criticised by technocrats and protest movements, particularly after the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions in 2011. The article is based on an analysis of the practical procedures of compensation in the contemporary period, in particular concerning flour and bread, and to a lesser extent butane, as well as on an analysis of the debates and struggles that subsidies has given rise to within Moroccan society, its State administration, and its political parties.

How clientelism undermines state capacity: Evidence from Mexican municipalities

Does clientelism perpetuate the weak state capacity that characterizes many young democracies? Prior work explains that clientelistic parties skew public spending to private goods and under-supply public goods. Building on these insights, this article argues that clientelism creates a bureaucratic trap. Governments that rely on clientelism invest in labor-intensive, low-skilled bureaucracies that can design and implement relatively more straightforward distributive policies. Although such bureaucracies are useful to win some elections, they lack the administrative capacity to sustain economic and human development. Empirically, the article examines the wage structure of municipal bureaucracies as a proxy for the personnel’s education and skills in Mexico between 2012 and 2018. During this period, turnover in the party in power in municipalities was frequent, a situation that also allows investigating how resilient the bureaucratic trap is to increased competition. The results show that all political parties invest in labor-intensive, low-skilled bureaucracies. However, the bureaucratic trap has a different grip on the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a quintessential clientelistic party, compared to other parties. After an electoral turnover, PRI’s bureaucracies have a larger proportion of low-wage personnel compared to the bureaucracies of other parties. Moreover, after an electoral turnover, the PRI allocates more resources to social assistance, subsidies, and internal transfers that are more conducive to clientelism. The overall size of the bureaucracy and the total wage bill are not affected in the same way, suggesting that there is indeed a trade-off between hiring lower and higher skilled employees. While prior work has proposed other clientelism-induced negative equilibria, this article offers a more direct path from clientelism to state capacity. The results help explain why more fiscal resources, political competition, and demand-side strategies to fight vote buying are insufficient and underscore the importance of civil service reform to tame clientelism.

Commemoration in the management practices of the Soviet elite in 1960–1970-ies (on the example of the Penza region)

The aim of the study is to analyze the practices of commemoration and memorial culture in the Penza region in the 1960–1970-ies. The issues of periodization of development of memorial culture and historical politics, the content of collective memories, transformation of social reflection, forms and means of commemoration are considered. An assessment is made of the possibility of using the methodological tools of the «new political history» at the regional and local levels of problem development. The high source potential of materials of personal origin in the study of commemorative content in narratives, symbols and signs is noted. In the course of the analysis of historiography of the problem, a pluralism of value judgments regarding the «instrumentality» of Soviet historical policy was revealed. Conclusions are drawn about the need for an objective analysis of national specifics, including in relation to the memory of the past, in the search for universal content in the structures of memorial culture. The evolution of functionality and content of historical politics in the 1960–1970-ies is traced: the general trend of the process is the decline in interest in the symbolic practices of the revolutionary era and the establishment of a new «organizing» idea as a manifestation of social demand for solidarity and common identity. The memory of the victims of the struggle for Soviet power as a tool of legitimization is giving way to socially significant experiences (memory of the Great Patriotic War) and the idea of restoring the unity of memory, a tolerant attitude towards the past as a whole, which united both the imperial and Soviet heritage. The factor of traumatic order is the memory of Stalin. The period under review also saw the institutionalization of the system of socio-political interaction in the field of memorial culture.

Law enforcement and political misinformation

Why is criminal law enforcement increasingly punitive, despite that the situation has improved for decades? This paper investigates this question from the perspective of political misinformation. To this end, we develop a law enforcement model with political competition and examine how political parties’ campaigns affect voters’ perceptions of crime and equilibrium law enforcement policy. In a political campaign stage, we show that one political party has an incentive to overstate the severity of crime, while the other party has an incentive to correct voters’ beliefs. However, although the two parties attempt to change voters’ beliefs in opposite directions, we find that the total effect of a political campaign is more likely to drive both parties’ policies in a harsh direction.

Do more inclusive parties change less? Intraparty democracy and programmatic change

The extent to which political parties change their policy positions and the emphasis they give to different topics is crucial for the representativeness and responsiveness of contemporary political systems. This article aims to clarify the role of intraparty democracy in explaining the amount of such change. Previous research has shown that a stronger empowerment of members decreases programmatic change. This hypothesis is tested here more broadly, looking at both position shifts and emphasis change, adopting a more comprehensive definition of intraparty democracy and unpacking the Left-Right scale into an economic and cultural subdimension. It is further argued that the effect of intraparty democracy is moderated by the relative salience of the economic vs. cultural subdimensions of political competition. The empirical analysis of 47 parties in 10 countries between 1995 and 2019 confirms that more internally democratic parties change less, while evidence concerning the moderating effect of relative salience is more mixed.

The impact of political competition on low-carbon technology innovation: From the perspective of officials’ personal characteristics

Political competition is reflected in the strategic interaction of regional government's behavioral motivation driven by “official tournament.” Especially since environmental protection was officially included in the official performance appraisal system in 2005, the interactive trend of local governments’ economic development and environmental protection is more obvious. The policy uncertainty caused by this interaction is a major challenge for the government to promote regional sustainable development. Different from previous studies that only focus on the impact of political competition on environmental governance, this paper studies the impact of political competition on the low-carbon technology innovation from the perspective of sustainable development. Combined with the characteristics of Provincial Party Secretaries and Provincial Governors, the influence mechanism of political competition on low-carbon technology innovation is analyzed based on the method of spatial dubin model. Firstly, it finds that political competition has a significant negative impact on low-carbon technology innovation in the region and its adjacent regions, which is mainly caused by the political competition of Provincial Governors, while the political competition of Provincial Party Secretaries has no significant impact on low-carbon technology innovation. Secondly, the results of the mediation effect test show that reducing the intensity of environmental regulation in exchange for economic growth and political promotion opportunities is one of the reasons why the political competition of Provincial Governors inhibits low-carbon technology innovation. Thirdly, the results of the heterogeneity test of official characteristics show that the age of Provincial Governors is less and the tenure is longer, the stronger the inhibiting effect of Provincial Governors’ political competition on low-carbon technology innovation is. These conclusions provide policy suggestions for enterprises to make environmental investment decisions under different political environments.

“Russian Issue” Solution by the Polish Separatists and Russian Revolutionaries” in 1861–1863

In the article the author examines the issues related to the exposure of the ideological and political content and interdependence of the “Polish” and “Russian issues” in the years of 1861–1863. Thereupon the author analyzes the three approaches to the ideological and political solution of the “Russian issue”: that of the Polish separatists, Russian radicals and extremists in Russia and that of A.I. Herzen and the emigrants united around the “Kolocol” (“Bell”) magazine published in London. He reveals the ideological principles, strategic goals and tactical methods common for the three approaches employed to sole the “Russian issue” in the context of the concluded “Russian-Polish revolutionary union”. The author shows that te ideological and political commonness of that “union” was based on the recognition of the necessity of Polish separatism victory, Russian state destruction and disintegration of large Russian nation. And the instruments for reaching those goals besides the separatist uprisings in the Kingdom of Poland and Western Russia were the peasant revolts in Central Russia provoked by “revolutionary” propaganda. The scientifi c novelty of the research consists in revealing the threat for the Russian state and Russian nation security posed by the “Russian-Polish revolutionary union”. To conclude, the author shows the reaction of Western-Russian Orthodox population and the Great Russian nation to the threat of foreign intervention, the challenge of armed rebellion and methods of the “Russian issue” solving brought about by the members of the “revolutionary” union.

“History of Belarusian Statehood” in the Grip of the Russian Empire

The article is devoted to the review of the second volume of the “History of Belarusian statehood” published by the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus. The volume is dedicated to the history of Belarus as part of the Russian Empire (from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century), when the primary stage in the formation of the Belarusian national movement took place. The main attention is paid to the ideological and political content of this historical synthesis in the light of the basic trends in the historical policy of Belarus.

Between Election Rivalry and the Agency Costs of Government: The Effectiveness of Party Competition Across Indian States, 1957–2018

Two dimensions of the intensity of interparty rivalry are used to test the hypothesis that greater interparty competition enhances government efficiency. Using data from a set of 14 large Indian state governments between 1957 and 2018, we find confirmation for two political rivalry hypotheses. The first is that the ex-post size of the first versus second place seat share winning margin is a useful metric of the (in)effectiveness of rival party policing of incumbent spending behavior. The second is the hypothesis that excessive spending by the incumbent governing party is decreased by the expectation of greater election contestability and that contestability is related to the expected effective number of competing parties ( ENPSeats) nonmonotonically. Our analysis suggests that contestability across Indian States reaches a maximum when the incumbent faces an expectation of ENPSeats that is closer to 5 than to Duverger's 2.

Peer effect, political competition and eco-efficiency: evidence from city-level data in China

ABSTRACT This study examines the impacts of political competition on eco-efficiency. We first develop a theoretical model in which local government officials compete against each other to maximise their own political score. We find that after an initial stage of decline, eco-efficiency eventually turns upwards, once environmental performance becomes a meaningful component of local government officials’ annual assessment. Eco-efficiency also exhibits a pattern of convergence. Lastly, the level of political competition is found to be negatively correlated with eco-efficiency. For the empirical analysis, we use a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to compute the eco-efficiency level for 191 Chinese cities from 2003 to 2015. Our empirical evidence presents a ‘U’-shape pattern in the trend of eco-efficiency and identifies two peer effects that work in opposite directions: the incentivising effect arising from higher performing neighbours, and the disincentivising effect when a city outperforms its competitors. Both peer effects lead to convergence in eco-efficiency, and our spatial econometric modeling analysis suggests that the net peer effect is significantly positive. We also find evidence of political competition reducing eco-efficiency, as predicted in the theoretical model. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of eco-efficiency.

Violence Against Women in Politics – a Study in Poland

The increase in women’s participation in political life in recent decades has resulted in research explaining how women’s presence (or absence) changes the form, nature and content of politics. However, a gender perspective is still lacking, especially in the relationship between political participation and violence. Violence against women in politics is increasingly recognised around the world as a significant barrier to women’s participation in political life. The aim of the research is to find out whether politically active women are more exposed to violence (physical, psychological, symbolic, sexual, economic) than politically active men and whether violence against politicians is related to belonging to a political party. The research conducted among Polish politicians (n-88) confirms that both women and men who are politically active experience violence. However, women are more often attacked psychologically, symbolically and sexually. Politicians acting under the banner of a party are much more likely to experience violence than non-partisan politicians. Physical violence is very rare, and the level of experiencing violence in all its forms decreases with age.

The response of the European parties to the transformation of the socio-political cleavages

ABSTRACT From a bottom-up perspective, cleavage theory links the socio-economic trends existing in the political community with the shape acquired by party politics. Globalization and European integration impacted European society, creating novel socio-economic divides and bringing new social, cultural and economic issues into the political discussion. The impact of the novel cleavage over the pre-existent societal socio-political fractures acquires a central role in the study of European Union politicization. Deploying critical discourse analysis (CDA) and discourse-historical approach (DHA), this study aims to comprehend how the emergence of a novel cleavage has influenced the discourse of the mainstream European parties. The manifestos of the European Christian democratic, socialist and liberal parties from the last three European Parliament elections are analyzed to assess the contemporary relevance of the left-right political competition in a scenario characterized by the salience gained by transnational issues and the electoral success of populist elites.

Features of the gubernatorial elections in the Yaroslavl region in 2022

The article describes the legal foundations and political features of the gubernatorial elections in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In particular, authors focus on the political situation before the elections of the Governor of the Yaroslavl region in 2022. They come to conclusion that in the Yaroslavl region, the election campaign took place in the absence of political competition primarily due to the use of the “municipal filter” in the gubernatorial election system of the region, providing the overwhelming advantage of in the use of administrative, informational and financial resources to the main candidate, as well as low activity of other candidates. In addition, there were other important elements of the election campaign of federal leaders of public opinion, in particular federal ministers and senior state officials. Finally, one of the key features of the gubernatorial elections in the Yaroslavl region was the possibility of self-nomination of candidates that provided a solid public distance between the main candidate and the widely criticized United Russia party. These conclusions are confirmed with the help of the analysis of the political situation in the Yaroslavl region before the start of the election campaign, the overview of actions and resources of the main contenders based on open sources, and the content analysis of mass media.

The political contention of LGBTQ+ communities in the digital age - state of the art, limitations, and opportunities for comparative research

ABSTRACT This paper develops an analytical framework for comparative research on political contention in the digital age and, building upon it, provides a literature review of social media research related to LGBTQ+ political contention. So far, we lack systematic insights into the literature on digitally-mediated LGBTQ+ political contention and its potential for comparative research. Applying scoping literature review, we focus on the key comparative dimensions such as political context, social media, and knowledge production. The results provide an overview of the state of the art, limitations, and opportunities while also developing an agenda for future comparative research. This paper supports the visibility of LGBTQ+ issues in a still hostile public debate for both LGBTQ+ activists and researchers.

Perceptions of teachers and students about the use of ICTs in physical education classes: uses, advantages, and projections

The digitalization of societies is not a homogeneous or mechanistic process that moves in parallel to technological processes, since the uses of ICT are linked to the social and political contingency of each country. Consequently, this paper set out to analyze the perception of teachers and students about the use of ICTs in Physical Education classes in schools in Santiago of Chile. The use of ICTs in Physical Education is uncommon in Chile, these are focused on physical exercise and folklore teaching. A qualitative methodology was used. Based on structured interviews with teachers and students from schools in the southern area of Santiago. These were analyzed through Atlasti software. A qualitative analysis of content and a thematic analysis was carried out through data coding. The results show that there are differences in the perception of ICT by teachers and students. The former prioritize technologies applied to physical exercise. The latter consider that technologies are important for obtaining information and managing communication between teacher and student. It is concluded that it is necessary to generate institutional mechanisms that allow socialization in new skills and knowledge of technologies, since the lack of training in these skills could produce severe problems in the integration into the new digital society that is developing in Chile. Likewise, there is a generational gap in the use of this type of technologies, which would affect the older population. Keywords: ICTs in the classroom; Physical education; Digital society; Education in Chile.

Democratic contestation, organised labour, and pension reform in Ghana and Malawi

AbstractWhat explains variation in African states' commitment to pensions? This article argues that differences in the structure of contestation and legacies of state‐labour relations matter. When competition is confined to fewer and more stable parties, social welfare appeals gain currency to mobilise swing voters and makes it more likely that pensions will become a subject of political competition. However, legacies of labour accommodation can strengthen certain elements of pension reform, but also reinforce certain policy mindsets such as contributory insurance. These ideas are developed with case studies of Ghana and Malawi. The cases utilise process‐tracing evidence to demonstrate how specific structures of contestation and labour legacies led to divergent pathways of pension reform. The article highlights the significant challenges involved in strengthening pensions in Africa, and therefore the limited potential for a reconstitution of state‐citizen relations based on pension access.