Incumbent Research Articles

PELATIHAN MENULIS KOMENTAR SINGKAT, PADAT DAN TEPAT DALAM MERESPON SEJUMLAH ISU VIRAL DI MEDIA SOSIAL DIKALANGAN SANTRI DKM MASJID AR-RAHMAH

Nowadays, perhaps everyone uses media to carry out activities, especially activities related to communication between one individual and another individual. With media, it will be easier for everyone to carry out daily activities. Therefore, the definition of media can be said to be very broad, for you as a teacher you will definitely determine the appropriate learning media for your students. Not only that, the media which is more often used as an intermediary for communication is often used by workers or even political officials who want to nominate themselves. The media that often appear during the Indonesian democracy party are usually better known as political communication media. So, don't be surprised if during the Indonesian democracy party there will be a lot of information from various media containing only political issues or facts. Through the technological media revolution, the distance will indeed feel very close. The technological media revolution, as the fourth wave of development in world society, has led to a world that is truly vast and seems to have no distance

The Trauma of Secularisation in Afrikaans Reformed Churches

On 18 July 2018, a column was published in a South African newspaper, Beeld, in which the authors present the results of interviews conducted with members of Afrikaans Reformed Churches in South Africa. The interviewees reported the trauma they had experienced with the church changing its symbols, which the interviewees experienced as “secularisation.” Where the church is regarded as a place congregants visit for support in times of uncertainty and anxiety, in this case it has become the source of trauma. Interviewees expressed trauma wherever the following occurred: 1) well-known liturgies, symbols, and songs are replaced with “worldly” ones; 2) electronic music replaces the organ; 3) the pulpit is removed; 4) the pastor becomes an entertainer; and 5) office bearers dress casually. This column was also published in affiliated Afrikaans newspapers Die Burger and Volksblad, which provoked massive reaction in letters to the newspapers. This article reports on the reaction from writers under the following headings: 1) feelings of discomfort and estrangement from the church; 2) feelings of lost holiness; 3) concerns that a sacred space has been violated; 4) anger because symbols as powerful expressions of faith connecting one to God, have been removed from the church; 5) ageing church-goers are being blamed for keeping the church from renewing; 6) accusations that liturgy pointing to the Word of God is being changed; 7) warnings that the church exists by virtue of being different from the world. The article concludes by situating the trauma presented by the letter writers in the tension between tradition and modernity, a tension that is reportedly experienced at present at high levels in Afrikaans Reformed Churches.

The harsh face of the empire by invitation: Coups in the US world order

Where were coups more likely to occur in the US world order? The US has occasionally resorted to coups to realign the foreign policy preferences in allied nations with its own preferences. This article explains why coups were more likely in countries where the leaders enjoyed an incumbency advantage that thwarted the ability of potential successors to gain power through regular channels of leadership turnover. That was more likely to be the case in presidential than in parliamentary democracies, and more likely in personalistic, military, or single-party regimes than in autocracies with multiparty legislatures.

Preventing leaders' autocratic entrenchment by exponential super-majority threshold escalators

This article focuses on alternatives to leaders' constitutional term limits which failed to protect democracy in innumerable countries as they did not reduce incumbency advantages in re-election contests. Such a reduction can achieve a super-majority thresholds escalator for incumbents' re-election. Research has found that setting super-majority thresholds for leadership offices improves the quality of leadership. However, leaders' autocratic entrenchment poses the worse problem of democratic leadership quality. Setting escalating super-majority thresholds for an incumbent's re-election would bar autocratic entrenchment by reducing her/his incumbency advantages in re-election contests. Both ordinal and exponential escalator versions prolong the tenure of successful high-moral effective leaders beyond two terms, allowing them to use accumulated trust credit to advance radical changes, while incumbents who fail to achieve a super-majority threshold are replaced. However, the ordinal version lacks a terminal term, thus it may not prevent autocratic entrenchment, while the exponential version with its terminal term that ensures succession while escalating super-majority thresholds mitigates the exponential growth of leaders' power resources with tenure. After an incumbent fails to re-elect, a second voting round without her/him will give the winner a clear mandate to rule. Suggestions for further study of barring leaders' entrenchment by exponential escalating super-majority thresholds are offered.JEL classificationD02; D70; K16; Z13; Z18.

Information Disorders and Civil Unrest

Various scholars in the global north have explored information disorders and have been able to present findings on them and their implications on various sectors; unfortunately, this has not always been the case for the global South. This desktop study explores information disorders in South Africa during the July 2021 unrest in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal between the 7-19 July. This paper demonstrates that information disorders on social media have been used as a catalyst for unrest; they are used to mobilize both those online and offline. This work shows how politicians and influential individuals used these disorders to facilitate and instigate civil unrest during July 2021. This work argues that people in political office and influential individuals should be aware of the responsibility of being influential and the consequences of their social media posts. The work further argues that despite various ways to counter these information disorders, the digital divide and literacy rate in South Africa make this challenging.

What Comes after Cabinet? Post-Cabinet Careers of German Regional Ministers between 1945 and 2014

Political elite studies so far have often dealt with career paths before entering a particular political position, focusing mostly on individual states of a career. However, they have consistently neglected what comes after a political office and the temporal–sequential character of biographies. This paper addresses these two issues. Using sequence analysis techniques, it examines the post-cabinet careers of ministers from the German states in the period 1945–2014 using a newly created, original dataset containing 1400 trajectories and over 12,000 coded person years. The descriptive analysis shows partly significant differences in post-cabinet careers by gender, state, decade, and last ministerial portfolio, but less so by party membership. Three of the five clusters found represent comparatively homogeneous post-cabinet career structures. Whereas in the early years of the republic most politicians did not have a subsequent (long) professional career after leaving office, switching to the private business sector and, above all, remaining in politics at the state level, represent the two most prominent career paths. A springboard career in federal politics, on the other hand, is rare, but certainly possible. From a methodological point of view, this study shows the potential, but also the problems of sequence analysis for research on political elites and offers ideas on how to continue with this approach.

Conditional Political Cycles in Africa: Myth or Reality?

Abstract This study tests for the presence of political cycles in Africa. Through an analysis encompassing data from 30 African nations over the period 1980–2020, we ask whether political incumbents in Africa rely on monetary and fiscal policy variables to improve their reelection prospects. In particular, we test for the existence of ‘conditional political cycles’, namely, we show that both government consumption and money growth go up during an election year, even when we account for critical institutional factors such as government attributes and political regimes. Our findings reveal a noticeable upswing in both government consumption and money growth during election years, a trend that holds consistent even after controlling for key institutional variables. Further exploration, however, unveils that this phenomenon is nuanced, particularly in the case of political monetary cycles; in particular, our analysis shows that when an African country is classified as a democracy during an election year, broad money falls. But although robust institutions can curtail the intensity of political monetary cycles, they do not exert a similar effect on fiscal variables. Finally, we test for the presence of ‘political credit cycles’ and find no empirical evidence that African incumbents manipulate credit markets to bolster their electoral outcomes.

Billionaire Politicians: A Global Perspective

We introduce an original dataset of formal political participation for over 2,000 individuals included in the Forbes Billionaires List. We find that billionaire politicians are a surprisingly common phenomenon: Over 11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought political office. Even compared to other elite groups known for producing politicians from their ranks, this is a high rate of political participation. Moreover, billionaires focus their political ambitions on influential positions, have a strong track record of winning elections, and lean to the right ideologically. We also document substantial cross-national variation: a country’s number of billionaire politicians is not simply a product of its total number of billionaires, but is instead related to regime type. Specifically, billionaires formally enter the political sphere at a much higher rate in autocracies than in democracies. We conclude by discussing the normative implications of our findings and outlining a new research agenda on billionaire politicians.

Gone, but not forgotten? The German federal election 2021 and the effect of an incumbent who did not run

The German federal election 2021 was remarkable partly because the incumbent chancellor Angela Merkel, albeit still popular, was not running for re-election and did not figure prominently in the campaign. Drawing on the literatures on incumbency advantage, cost of ruling, and candidate-centered voting, we analyze whether an outgoing incumbent might still have an effect on voters’ attitudes and behavior. We distinguish two phenomena: First, we expect the effects of outgoing incumbents on electoral behavior to wash off during campaigns, as voters get more informed and adjust to new candidates. Second, if the incumbent’s successor as front-runner of their party manages to link themselves to their predecessor, the incumbent’s reputation might rub off on the new candidate, possibly indirectly enhancing electoral fortunes of the party. We examine the dynamics of these phenomena using data from the panel and RCS components of the German Longitudinal Election Study and a large-scale survey experiment.

Do we only have narcissists to choose from?

In a large nationally representative study in the United States, we provide novel evidence that the greater pool of candidates who run for political office are higher in narcissism. Prior research has found that those who would like run for office, but don't actually run, are higher in grandiose narcissism. Here, using the SINS measure of narcissism, which asks respondents if they are a narcissist, we find that narcissistic individuals have greater expressive political ambition and are more likely than others to not only be interested in political office, but to actually run for political office.

Women and digital political communication in non-Western societies

ABSTRACT This special issue brings together contributions and theoretical insights that probe ways through which gender interacts with context to shape non-Western-based political communication trends. It seeks to address the need to diversify theory and research in political communication. Our key contribution is to provide empirically-guided, contextually-shaped and methodologically-rich research on digital political communication strategies that facilitate women's political participation in geographical areas underrepresented in the scholarship. We do this in five ways. First, feminist approaches to digital political communication have rarely been studied this way, focusing exclusively on previously unaddressed developments in non-Western settings while also theorizing their contributions to communication scholarship through a special issue format in a credible journal that retains a wider audience. Second, it is of scholarly interest to know whether women politicians in richer and poor countries grapple with the same issues when it comes to political communication. Third, we provide novel ways to expand scholarship on women's digital political participation through incorporation of indigenous knowledge and practices. Fourth, the diversity of fresh voices coupled with pioneering findings assembled in this special issue is encouraging in a field dominated by a few. Finally, the number of women vying for political office in the Global South is increasing. Therefore, studying how they are faring on the political frontline has a significant bearing on how current and future studies within the remit of understudied non-Western digital political communication can and should be framed, paving way for new and better understandings on the region and its multifaceted political perturbations.

Analysis of Factors Influencing Structural Placement in Makassar City Goverment

The placement of structural positions for civil servants in each region has its own dynamics and complexities, one of which is the placement of structural positions in the Makassar City government, which has not fully met the criteria for position requirements in terms of both rank and competency. This study analyzes the factors that influence the placement of structural positions in the Makassar City government. It is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach. Data collection was conducted through interviews with several key informants, who were considered to understand the placement of structural positions and complement them with data and information relevant to this study. The data sources consisted of primary and secondary data, and the data analysis model used is an interactive one. The results of the study indicate that there are several factors that influence the placement of structural positions in the Government of Makassar City – namely the first factor, where political interests are still the main determinant in the placement of structural positions. The second factor indicates that although the objective assessment based on the merit system has been well implemented, the results of the structural position selection assessment are still in the nature of recommendations, and the determination of structural officials is the authority of staffing supervisors who incidentally are political officials, so that the bargaining position to influence the decisions of public officials is still thriving in the nature of local governance.
 Keywords: structural positions, civil servants

Ethical and policy considerations for organ trafficking and transplant tourism: Based on the UK's first international case of human trafficking for the purpose of organ removal

AbstractThis study examines the UK's May 2023 judgment in an international organ trafficking and organ tourism case. Human trafficking for organ removal is one of the least understood but growing forms of trafficking worldwide. Countries in the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas are often widely criticized by the international transplant community as sites for organ trafficking. However, we believe that when discussing this issue, it is not just these areas that need to be addressed. What is particularly special is that this case not only involves transnational human trafficking, organ trafficking, and illegal organ transplantation interest chains but also involves the participation of national political officials and complex social and humanistic factors. This article focuses on the current ethical and policy issues involved in organ transplant tourism and organ trafficking and analyzes the implications of this case for our country's donation and transplantation work.

행동과학의 렌즈로 재조명한 정치적 경기순환론

The political business cycle theory demonstrates that incumbent politicians opportunistically manipulate macroeconomic business cycles such as inflation or unemployment to further their chances of re-election. Since Nordhaus’s (1975) pioneering model on the topic, both economists and political sciences have long examined the interdependence of political and macroeconomic outcomes within various contexts. Notwithstanding the promise of the theory of political business cycle, less attention has been paid to its theoretical assumptions—voters’ formation of the image for the incumbent and the durational effect of political manipulation of macroeconomic variables. Drawing insights from behavioral science, this study examines how macroeconomic outcomes in the election year affect the percentage of votes in the next election year in the Korean local government contexts. Findings suggest that the assumptions of political business cycle theory need to be expanded to enhance its theoretical development and practical applications.

Policy experimentation with repeated elections

When is an incumbent incentivized to experiment with risky reform policy in the presence of future elections? We study a dynamic game between two political parties with heterogeneous preferences and a voter. The voter elects a party that then chooses a policy from a status quo and two risky reform policies. Under infrequent elections, the incumbent party experiments with its preferred reform policy even if its outlook is not promising. In contrast, with overly frequent elections, the incumbent prematurely stops experimentation because an imminent election increases the danger of losing power. While infrequent elections are suboptimal, inefficiency from overly frequent elections is severe enough that voter is worse than under a dictatorship. We also show that the voter's ‘incumbent advantage’ behavior could lead to an efficient outcome in the frequent elections limit. Our results suggest that leaders engage in risky reform when the surrounding political environment allows them to fail.

A post‐politics earnings penalty? Evidence from politicians' lifetime income trajectories (1970–2019)

AbstractPoliticians are commonly believed to gain financially from holding and/or having held office. We argue that there may often also be economic downsides to pursuing a political career and investigate whether and when politicians can (not) capitalize on their political experience. We thereby study both entry into and exit from political office and directly compare the returns to politics across government levels and types of politicians. Empirically, we build on detailed information from Norwegian administrative register data over the period 1970–2019 to study individual‐level income developments before, during and after a political career at the national and local levels (covering nearly 22,000 individuals and 700,000 person‐years). Using an event‐study methodology, we show that politicians on average witness a significant income boost during their time in office. In sharp contrast, leaving political office is on average associated with a substantial drop in income, which generally outweighs the income gain from entry into office. These findings suggest that most politicians face a net present value loss from holding office.

Transitional Support for Former Members of Parliament: Benchmarks for ‘Professional Parliaments’

Abstract Leaving parliament is often a time of significant financial, employment and emotional difficulty for MPs. However, few studies have examined the support provided by parliaments to departing and former members. Consequently, parliaments lack access to best-practice case studies to improve the transitional experience for MPs. This article develops five benchmarks for supporting former MPs, covering transitional financial assistance; retirement income; career, financial, life transitions and redundancy counselling; mental health and medical services; and social and networking opportunities. These benchmarks are used to assess the support provided to former members by 22 selected ‘professional parliaments’. Although most of these parliaments offer adequate retirement income, none currently provide sufficient transitional financial assistance for MPs who depart before pensionable age. In all cases, improvements are also required to mental health and other counselling services. Most parliaments provide adequate social and networking opportunities. Implementing and extending these measures will improve the transitional experience of former MPs and enhance democratic rotation by reducing impediments to high-quality candidates from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds from seeking political office, while easing the exit of MPs who are ready to leave.

Challenges of Public Participation in Solid Waste Management at Nkanfoa Landfill Site in the Cape Coast Municipality of Ghana

Public participation in waste management is considered a sustainable approach to waste management as such it should be embraced. In municipalities of developing countries like Ghana, public outcry over the wrong location of waste dumpsites and poor public interest in waste management has called for this study to understand how public participation contributes to efficiency in solid waste management. For those living close to waste dump sites, conditions including odour and smoke pollution are believed to be avoidable when the public participates in decision making on the location of waste dump sites. This study investigated challenges facing Nkanfoa community regarding their involvement in waste management decision making. A mixed method approach was used to gain an in-depth understanding of the challenges associated with public participation in solid waste management. The findings showed that the community members feel their concerns are not factored into the decision making process of the assembly as such a lack of trust between them and the municipal assembly. Also, there is the perception that political office holders interfere in public meetings and are not accountable to citizens hence the public apathy towards collective waste management decision making and their unwillingness to pay for waste services. The study concludes that for community participation in waste management to be effective, there should be online platforms for verification of the extent to which assemblies engage the public in collective decision making and this should be one criteria for allocating more common funds to district assemblies that perform well on this indicator.

Capacity Building and Women Leadership in Kenya Political Elective Positions

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the role of capacity building on women leadership in Kenya political elective positions.
 Methodology: A mixed method research design was adopted with a positivism philosophy approach. A simple random sampling method was applied to select a representative sample of the study. The target population comprised of 172 women elected in National Assembly and Senate. Primary data was collected through open ended questionnaires and secondary data was collected through published records. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0 was used to facilitate data analysis process. The collected data was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics to draw conclusions.
 Results: The inferential statistics results revealed a positive and significant relationship between capacity building and inclusion of women in the elective positions in Kenya at p<0.05. Capacity building and women leadership in Kenya political elective positions had a Pearson’s correlation of r=0.323 (p=0.001) which was weak but positive. The correlation results implied that capacity building is had a weak, strong and positive association with women leadership in Kenya political elective positions. According to these findings increase in capacity building increased women leadership in Kenya political elective positions. The R2 for the model was 0.105 indicating that 10.5% variations in women leadership in elective in Kenya could be explained for by capacity building other factors held constant. This was a sign that the model was appropriate for establishing the link between relationship between capacity building and inclusion of women in the elective positions in Kenya and, as a result, for drawing the conclusions and suggestions from the study.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: While the existing Trait Theory of Leadership used in this study was validated, the study recommends that that political parties should organize for training on women who are willing to vie for political offices. These trainings should aim to equip women leaders with knowledge and skills which will increase their chances of being elected in elective in positions. According to the study, policymakers and political parties should take the lead in providing mentorship programs for women seeking elective positions to have same experience just like their men counterpart.

Congressional Elections and Union Officer Prosecutions

Abstract Politicizing the investigation of politically active groups is harmful for both the justice system and democratic accountability. I test whether members of the U.S. Congress affect the investigation and prosecution of politically active labor unions. Union officers are 1.5 percentage points more likely to be prosecuted when their supported candidate barely loses instead of barely wins (compared to the 3% base rate). Anecdotal evidence and a novel decomposition suggest a role for both union-supported winners protecting allies and union-opposed winners pushing for aggressive prosecution of their opponents. I show that prosecutions undermine unions' strength, and I calculate implications for the incumbency advantage.