Previous Political Experience Research Articles

Resistance Comes First: Pirate TV as Postmedia Activism

Resistance Comes First:Pirate TV as Postmedia Activism Joseph Sannicandro (bio) HACKED TRANSMISSIONS: TECHNOLOGY AND CONNECTIVE ACTIVISM IN ITALY BY ALESSANDRA RENZI University of Minnesota Press, 2020 HACKED TRANSMISSIONS: TECHNOLOGY AND CONNECTIVE ACTIVISM IN ITALY BY ALESSANDRA RENZI University of Minnesota Press, 2020 A brash "self-made" billionaire with no previous political experience is elected to the nation's highest office, buoyed by a rising tide of populism. Sophisticated manipulation of the media stokes xenophobia and resentment toward elites. The chattering classes decry declining press freedom and the hyperpolarization of society, while supporters seem happy to toss a monkey wrench into national politics as usual. While this farce may now be familiar to American readers, the tragedy began for Italians in 1994, when Silvio Berlusconi first took office as prime minister. Berlusconi continued to dominate Italian politics through 2011 and whose specter still hangs over Italy even now, always seemingly one clever joke and a smile away from the news cycle. More important than Forza Italia, the center-right political party he founded prior to his first election, is Berlusconi's control of Mediaset, Italy's largest mass media company. The Economist calculated that, while in office, Berlusconi had "wielded influence over some 90% of Italy's broadcast media," the primary source of news for a majority of Italians.1 Berlusconi took advantage of the media liberalization that followed the widespread popularity of pirate radio during the 1970s, epitomizing the appropriation of resistance that would characterize his political career. But the politicization of the media in Italy certainly [End Page 194] did not begin with Berlusconi's conflicts of interest. Already in 1967, Umberto Eco recognized that "a country belongs to the person who controls communications,"2 and Italian activists have never ceased to make media production a prime terrain of contestation.3 In Hacked Transmissions, Alessandra Renzi provides a timely reflection on how activists challenged Berlusconi's media dominance. Through an immersive and historically thorough (auto)ethnography, Renzi explores the case of Telestreet, a decentralized network of pirate micro-TV stations that turned television into a collaborative epistemological practice with those marginalized by the media—not "representing" everyday life but incubating and organizing resistance through connective practices of coproduction. Renzi's genealogy of Telestreet finds its roots in the pirate radio movement of the 1970s, stretching through twenty-first-century digital television and social media. Telestreet intentionally describes its practice as connective rather than collective, making for a clever means of continuity that downplays what could otherwise become a technologically deterministic narrative. Renzi's intervention is not guided by the novelty of new media, but she instead carefully emphasizes "how people come together, work together, and change with technology" (4). The interrogation of connectivity extends to the study's method, as well as to its form. Hacked Transmissions "lays out a collaborative research methodology that puts processes of subjectivation at the center and attends to an ethics of connection and care" (2). One might not be surprised to find such language in an ethnography drawing upon fifteen years of participation, yet the conditions of activist research present unique challenges that necessitate such deep imbrication. Hacked Transmissions consists of an introduction, eight article-length chapters, and a short epilogue, a perhaps unconventional structure linked by what Renzi terms a "social movement energetics" (14). Coursing through multiple terrains of struggle, this focus on energy offers Renzi a way into the narrative that centers on neither specific individuals nor technologies. Renzi makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of activist media, while those not already predisposed to Continental philosophy will still find much of interest in her qualitative research. Her method of co-research benefits from the use of anecdote, personal stories, and a plethora of heterogeneous voices. The history of Telestreet's transformation from [End Page 195] "Indymedia-style to social-media-based production" has many commonalities to the experiences of other transnational media activists, while bringing to bear the unique contributions of Italian theory to the study of media, which Renzi articulates as connective activism, composition, and hacking (4). Many have argued that Italy is a political laboratory whose developments often anticipate those elsewhere in Europe and beyond...

Parliamentary Women Opposition Leaders: A Comparative Assessment Across 28 OECD Countries

While women have increasingly gained access to the position of opposition leader, we still know very little about their pathways to that office. Therefore, this article seeks to uncover the dynamics and patterns that distinguish the ascendency of women politicians to the office of opposition leader from a comparative perspective. In this article, opposition leaders are understood as the parliamentary party group leaders of the largest non-governing party in a given legislative assembly, which marks the closest equivalent to the Westminster understanding of leaders of the opposition that continues to dominate international notions of opposition leaders and oppositional leadership in parliamentary democracies. We draw on data from opposition leaders in 28 parliamentary democracies between 1996–2020 to identify opportunity structures that allow women opposition leaders to emerge across countries. In addition, we test how factors on the individual level (e.g., previous experience in party and parliament as well as in government) and at the party level (e.g., ideology) affect the likelihood that a parliamentary opposition leader is a woman. Our analyses demonstrate that the share of women in parliament significantly increases the likelihood that at least one of the parliamentary opposition leaders of the past 25 years was a woman. Moreover, opposition leaders in leftist parties are more likely to be women than their more rightist counterparts. Surprisingly, and contrary to our expectations, previous political experience does not shape the probability of women becoming opposition leaders. Thus, overall, the institutional and ideological contexts of selecting parliamentary opposition leaders seem to matter more than the experience and qualifications of individual candidates.

Measuring the impact of candidates’ tweets on their electoral results

ABSTRACT As politicians are increasingly using Twitter for campaigning, a question has been raised over its effectiveness in political communication. The aim of this paper is to study the influence of Twitter on candidates’ electoral performance, in the context of the 2019 Greek Parliamentary election. We are particularly interested in candidates’ Twitter activity and visibility. We apply an innovative method of analysis of each candidate’s potential reach, taking into account the followers and the followers of retweeters for each candidate and the number of tweets they were able to see. In this way, we explore whether the visibility of a candidate on Twitter is related to his/her electoral performance. We also control for other factors, such as intra-party competition, previous political experience, candidates’ name recognition, and so on. Findings suggest that among other factors (e.g. previous parliamentary experience), Twitter visibility has a significant positive effect on candidates’ electoral performance, especially when the candidates are already recognizable by the public.

Candidate Experience and Electoral Success

AbstractStudies of how previous political experience affects a candidate’s electoral success have overlooked the experience that candidates get from running campaigns even if they lose. This article argues that experience running for office, whether successfully or unsuccessfully, could give candidates several benefits, such as expertise in running strong campaigns, a network of connections, and visibility among the electorate. As a result, candidate experience, not just office-holding experience, should be positively correlated with electoral success. The article tests this expectation in Brazil using a database of candidates for seven types of elected offices between 1998 and 2018. It finds that candidates who ran for, but lost, elected offices are more likely to win when they run in future elections for the same and lower-ranked offices, compared to candidates with no experience running for office. Thus, candidate experience, not just office-holding experience, is important for explaining electoral success in politics.

The Rise and Fall of Modern Bounderby: An Overview of the Evolution of Economy from Mercantilism to Trumponomics with reference to Dickens’s Hard Times (1854)

The election of Donald Trump can be examined in the context of the rise of authoritarian populist, nationalist, and anti-globalist movements throughout the world due to neoliberal policies, job outsourcing, and the influx of immigrants. Unlike preceded presidents, Trump had no previous political or military experience; instead, he popped out from the business world and entertainment culture. The paper’s endeavour is twofold: first, to trace the evolution of the economy from Mercantilism to Trumponomics, which is a mixture of mercantilism globally and neoliberal flavoured with classical crony capitalism of Dickens’ Bounderby domestically to appease his voters and not to upset his wealthy friends. The second is to draw a comparison between Donald Trump and his counterpart Josiah Bounderby, a stark example of capitalism. The paper will not only trace his ascension to the very pinnacle of world power as the president of the United States but also his fall, testing the allegations of the clown prince of American politics and whether or not he betrayed his anti-globalist followers in pursuing his and big corporates interests. Like his counterpart, Mr Bounderby, who built his image on his rags-to-riches fairy tale, Trump built his own as a man of deals. While the former left no progeny and his fortune was whittled down by the court, the latter was proved to be the worst deal-maker ever. He did more harm than good and produced nothing but a faceless economy and a nation bitterly divided.

Losers together? Grand coalitions in the EU member states

AbstractOver the last two decades, the formation of grand coalitions has grown in the European Union (EU), even in countries with no previous political experience with them. Alongside a significant rise in both new and radical parties, grand coalitions signal the increasing fragmentation of contemporary European politics. We, therefore, investigate the electoral performance of both mainstream and new parties entering and leaving grand coalitions. We find that mainstream parties do not appear to enter grand coalitions after negative election results. They are, however, punished in the following elections, albeit not as heavily as previous findings have shown. This post-grand coalition electoral penalty is true for both major and minor grand coalition members. These findings contribute to the literature on party competition and provide insights into the choices mainstream parties' have been making in response to recent and rapid changes in the electoral landscape of the EU.

Quality of politicians and electoral system. Evidence from a quasi-experimental design for Italian cities

Abstract We study the effect of the electoral system (single-ballot vs runoff) on the quality of politicians, measured by the average educational attainment, at the local level in Italy over the period 1994–2017. By exploiting the discontinuous voting rule shift nearby the 15,000 population cut-off, we have implemented a RDD and found that the change in the electoral scheme leads to an overall downward variation in the educational attainment of local politicians by about 2 % compared to years of schooling of politicians in municipalities just below the cut-off. Findings are similar when we separately focus on the educational attainment of mayors and councilors, and when we use alternative measures of quality of politicians related both to the previous occupation and to previous political experience. However, different confounding policies related to the voting scheme change at the cut-off. We show that the negative effect is not directly related to the way politicians are elected (runoff vs single-ballot scheme) but to the number of lists supporting the mayoral candidates: in municipalities below 15,000 inhabitants candidates running for mayor are supported only by one single list, whereas above the cut-off mayoral candidates might be supported by more lists. Overall, we speculate that the negative impact produced by the treatment on the educational attainment of local politicians is explained by the different selection process of candidates adopted by political parties, rather than by voters’ preferences toward low-skilled politicians.

Right-Wing Populism and Evangelicalism in Guatemala: the Presidency of Jimmy Morales

In the fall of 2015, Jimmy Morales—an outspoken evangelical Christian, comedian, and well-known local TV actor—won the presidential elections in Guatemala. In what was a surprise victory, Morales succeeded as the candidate of the small, conservative, and right-wing Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN-Nacion). This article seeks to (a) illuminate the Christian background and political-military network behind Jimmy Morales, (b) explain the overlap between the Christian evangelical and right-wing discourses (specifically, Morales’ anti-establishment rhetoric; his claims to fight the corrupt elite; his defense of the traditional family; his support for the death penalty; and his opposition to same-sex marriage, LGTBQ rights, and abortion), and (c) to understand the broader socio-historical context of his presidency. Why did Guatemalans elect as their president a right-wing, evangelical entertainer with almost no previous political experience? This final inquiry includes an examination of earlier presidencies, including those of the neo-Pentecostal, right-wing dictator General Efrain Rios Montt and the Protestant President Jorge Serrano Elias.

Would-be M.E.P.s: backgrounds, profiles and trajectories

ABSTRACTThe characteristics of the elected representatives and candidates are an important element for understanding political systems. For this reason, this article, focusing on the Italian case, examines the socio-demographic peculiarities and the political-professional background of the candidates and elected to the 2019 elections for the European Parliament. The article has at least three reasons of interest. First, the work is based on an original and up-to-date data set. Secondly, the article presents some descriptive empirical analyses which, although focused on a single case and a single electoral round, provide some relevant indications, demonstrating how, on average, Italian M.E.P.s are not very different from those of other E.U. member states. Finally, the descriptive analysis is followed by an explanatory attempt aimed at understanding the characteristics that increase the likelihood of being elected. In this regard, the inferential analysis shows that candidates with previous political experience at the E.U. level are much more likely to be elected than others.

Bonding in Pursuit of Policy Goals: How MPs Choose Political Parties in the Legislative State of Nature

How do MPs in nascent legislatures choose a political party? We argue that MPs self‐select into groups of like‐minded colleagues to achieve favored policy outputs. MPs identify colleagues with similar preferences based on observed behavior and informative signals such as socioeconomic status, cultural background, and previous political experience. We test this explanation in the first democratically elected German parliament, the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848, that developed a differentiated party system in the absence of electoral and career incentives. Our statistical analysis shows that MPs were significantly more likely to join parties that were similar to them with regard to ideology, age, regional provenance, confession, noble status, and previous parliamentary experience. Qualitative evidence suggests that major changes in the party system were driven by disputes over policy. Our findings are particularly important for countries with more turbulent paths towards parliamentarization than those witnessed by archetypical cases like Britain or the United States.

Confronting the 'Electability Trap': Effects of Campaign Messages, Information, and Perceived Competence on Voter Evaluations of Underrepresented Candidates

While voters may form negative impressions of candidates that do not immediately fit traditional expectations, equal electoral success rates demonstrate that voters are not biased against women and racial minority candidates. I argue that candidates address voter perceptions through their campaign strategy and messages. Thus, a key dimension of campaign strategy is the extent to which perceptions of candidate gender and racial identity may encourage, or even necessitate, the use of differing campaign message strategies. This paper seeks to determine whether candidate profile characteristics might account for the seeming discrepancy between voter bias and electoral outcomes. I use large-scale observational and experimental messages to show how candidate identity, communication---particularly image-managing messages that express individualistic work-ethic and perseverance---and signals of competency affect voter perceptions. In a preliminary forced-choice paired-conjoint and a menu-based choice experiment (n=500), I find that constituents make judgments regarding vote choice, candidate issue competencies, and character using identity. Nevertheless, respondents positively respond to other dimensions of candidate profiles, specifically messages of work-ethic and previous political experience. In particular, Image-Management is consistently shown to be associated with a significant positive increase in these evaluations. In the menu-based survey experiment, I find that when respondents craft the candidates they would consider ideal and worthy of their vote, women and racial minorities are often recommended to pursue messages of Image-Management and higher educational attainment. Taken together, these findings suggest that candidate messaging may provide an account for why women and racial minority candidates are able to obtain electoral success despite evidence of voter biases. This work provides cutting-edge analysis of strategic campaign messaging and puts to the test its effectiveness in attenuating voter biases.

Rank effects in political promotions

This paper studies the effect of candidates’ personal vote ranks on promotions to political power in an open list proportional representation system. Using a regression discontinuity design and data from Finnish local elections, we find that ranking first within a party enhances a politician’s chances of getting promoted to the position of a municipal board chair, the most important task in Finnish local politics. Other ranks matter less. We document that the effect of ranking first is larger when there is less within-party competition, but the role of external competition is ambiguous. Our evidence suggests that the mechanism behind the rank effects is primarily unrelated to electoral incentives but rather to party-specific norms or political culture. Ranks seem to be, however, only a complement to other promotion criteria such as politicians’ previous political experience or how close to the party lines their policy positions stand.

Donald Trump, Globalization, and Modernity

The election of Donald Trump can be partially understood in the context of the rise of authoritarian populist, nationalist, and anti-globalist movements throughout the world. Unlike previous American presidents in the modern era, however, Donald Trump had no previous political experience and emerged from media culture and the business world, rather than the world of party politics. In this paper, I will focus on the assault on globalization in the Trump campaign, look at his administration and actions as president, and raise questions concerning whether or not he has betrayed his anti-globalist followers and is pursing business-as-usual for global, corporate capitalism—or something else. This investigation also leads us into engaging the Trump campaign/administration connections with Russia and the role of Russia and global computer networks in Election 2016, making Election 2016 the first US election deeply shaped by global political forces and the Internet, new media, and social networking.

El proyecto imperial mexicano a través de la prensa conservadora: 1863-1867

Artículo sección Escritorio

Ritual Demonstrations versus Reactive Protests: Participation Across Mobilizing Contexts in Mexico City

AbstractUsing an innovative survey of protest participants and nonparticipants from five major street demonstrations in Mexico City in 2011 and 2012, this study tests the assumption that influences on protest participation vary across different types of events; namely, ritual demonstrations and reactive protests. The comparison is based on two assumptions: that these are two of the dominant forms of protest in contemporary Latin America, and that specifying the context for different types of social movement participation provides a better understanding of the individual mobilization process for groups seeking to defend their rights or gain new benefits. The comparative analyses reveal some crucial differences. Political interest and previous political experience are more influential in the decision to take part in reactive demonstrations. For ritual demonstrations, the decision to participate tends to be driven more by personal and organizational connections.

Seniority, political experience, and support for government spending in the US House: a culture of spending?

Payne (1991a) postulates that there is a “culture of spending” in the US Congress, whereby members of Congress are socialized to increase their roll-call support for more spending as a function of length of service and exposure to the Washington culture. In this article we develop and test an expanded model of roll-call voting on spending matters, focusing on two potential sources of socialization effects: (1) exposure to the Washington culture of spending, primarily through seniority and proximity to Washington, DC, and (2) previous political experiences developed before members are elected to Congress. Using data for US House members from the 93rd through the 107th Congresses, we estimate a series of models in which we explain National Taxpayer Union scores as a function of seniority, previous political experience, personal attributes, and a range of constituency variables. We find strong and consistent seniority and political experience effects, with senior members and those with extensive political experience more likely to support greater spending than other members. These findings withstand a range of robustness tests.

El ascenso de los candidatos outsiders como consecuencia de las nuevas formas de Comunicación Política y la desafección ciudadana.

Los candidatos outsiders, aquellos que se presentan a elecciones sin contar con experiencia en política y al margen de los partidos, son habituales en nuestros días. En el presente artículo se pasa revista a los casos más significativos de los últimos 30 años y se analizan las causas del fenómeno, ligadas a las nuevas formas de Comunicación Política, el infoentretenimiento y la personalización, así como a la pérdida de confianza y desafección de los ciudadanos hacia los políticos por culpa de la crisis y la corrupción, revisando también los posibles riesgos de la generalización de estos candidatos para las democracias.

Central European MEPs and Their Roles: Behavioral Strategies in the European Parliament

AbstractThis article helps to better understand the role orientations of the Central European Members of the European Parliament, the factors that influence their strategies, and the relationship between their roles and activities. Based on the results of a quantitative survey research with MEPs from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia in the 2009–2014 term, I argue that it is possible to explain the political roles of MEPs by their attitudes towards politics and policy, and the territorial focus of representation (European vs. national level). Due to the internal mechanisms of the EP and its position in the multi-level governance system of European politics, these two dimensions represent dilemmas that all MEPs face, when it comes to the efficient use of their scarce resources: time and energy. This study demonstrates that socio-demographic factors, attitudes and political socialization all have an influence on what roles MEPs choose. The time spent in the EP, age, previous political experience, party affiliation, left-right self-definition and career ambitions are all important factors that can explain the political behavior of MEPs. The Central European MEPs’ focus on politics vs. policy and the European vs. national political arena have different roots, and different variables explain them. Orientation towards politics and policy largely depends on previous political experience and future career ambitions. Focus on the European or the national level is best explained by age, party affiliation and left-right self-definition.

La experiencia política importa. Estabilidad partidaria a nivel subnacional en el Perú

This article seeks to contribute to the study of party-building in the subnational level in Peru. Since the regional and municipal elections from 2002 to 2014, there has been a scenario of high party volatility and low partisan rooting. Only ten (10) regional political parties have been able to participate consecutively during the elections of this period. Therefore, this document explores how these political organizations managed to be stable and to present without interruption candidacies to subnational electoral processes. When analyzing various explanatory dimensions, it is found that the dimension that best answers this question is the previous political experience that the leadership had at the time of establishing such regional political parties.

Primary Effect in Open-List Elections

We study how political parties select political leaders. Using regression discontinuity design and data from Finnish local elections, we find that parties use vote ranks to decide upon promotions. Moreover, we show that this primary effect is higher when competition either between or within parties is lower. We document differences in promotion patterns between parties, the primary effect being stronger in right-wing parties. This result is in line with previous research arguing that right-wing parties prefer more inclusive nomination procedures. Finally, our descriptive analysis suggests that parties weight previous political experience and candidates’ policy positions in their promotion decisions more than voters value these characteristics.