The Australian Experience of Electoral Bribery: Dealing in Electoral Support

This article explores state and federal Australian cases from the past thirty years — legal judgments, inquiries and political scandals — which implicate the law and concept of electoral bribery. Specifically it examines deals involving preferences and arrangements made between politicians and “third parties” such as lobby groups and the media. It shows that, defying assumptions that it died out a century ago, electoral bribery remains a thorny ethical and legal concept, particularly given evolving norms and electioneering practices. If bribery is to be a workable ethical or legal concept for judging contemporary electoral conduct then it needs to deal with horizontal relations between political actors rather than, as it traditionally has, to focus upon vertical relations between politicians and electors characterised by the former's efforts to buy the latter's votes.     

Explaining Electoral Reforms in Lithuania

This paper examines the numerous changes made to Lithuanian electoral laws between 1992 and 2010. It argues that the two dominant political blocs sought to avoid competition from smaller ‘challenger’ parties by reducing the proportionality of the mixed electoral system between 1992 and 2000. Despite such efforts, the number of effective parties increased and the parliamentary elections in 2000 resulted in a shift from a two-party system to a multiparty system. This created incentives for parties to ensure against future electoral exclusion by maintaining the vote aggregation rules, which had proven to allow for multipartism. This resulted in the relative stability of electoral rules between 2000 and 2010.     

Electoral coordination in Anglophone Africa

Electoral coordination has been a primary concern for scholars of African politics, interested in topics such as ethnic conflict mitigation and democratisation, for decades. However, understanding of micro-level electoral coordination in Sub-Saharan Africa is generally still very limited. This study is the first to investigate voter coordination in Sub-Saharan Africa using constituency-level election results. Studying 20 single-member district elections during the period 1990–2010 in five Anglophone African countries (Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia) demonstrates that many African elections continue to show low levels of electoral coordination. Using a multi-level regression analysis, the study shows that the most important explanation for low levels of coordination across Africa is high voter volatility. It is argued that insufficient information makes it hard for voters and candidates to act strategically. However, the level of democracy, which has been emphasised in earlier aggregate level research, does not significantly affect the level of coordination.     

Constituency Delimitation and Electoral Authoritarianism in Malaysia

This article explains how the electoral one-party state of United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in Malaysia is maintained through constituency delimitation. It examines how the means of inter-state malapportionment, intra-state malapportionment, gerrymandering, pre-delimitation boundary changes and seat increase are used in the on-going delimitation exercises. Malapportionment and gerrymandering in the last cycle of delimitation exercises in 2003–5 had secured Prime Minister Najib Razak a comfortable 60% parliamentary majority in 2013 despite winning only 47% of popular votes. While Razak may suffer greater attrition of votes due to his global financial scandal involving Malaysia’s state sovereign fund, 1MDB, he may still win a bigger parliamentary majority in the upcoming election, which must be held latest by August 2018. The article questions if the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) electoral system, which is not only susceptible to manipulations, but also very winner-takes-all in nature, suits Malaysia’s plural society.     

Legislative Twitter Style: Electoral Vulnerability,Social Media,and Constituency-Building in Large Multimember Electoral Systems

How do legislators use social media to cultivate their constituencies in large multimember electoral districts? Colombia's Senate nationwide district offers a suitable case to examine how lawmakers, through their behaviour on Twitter, geographically target their audiences. We employ microblog user geolocation methods which infer locations using textual content in order to identify where Colombian senators' Twitter ‘home’ is. We find that senators' location targeting on Twitter largely mirrors the geographical distribution of their votes. Deviations from that pattern mostly stem from their vulnerability to intraparty competition and the nature of their parties' organisation.     

The Electoral Cycle and Multi-Level Voting in Germany

The aim of this contribution is to analyse whether Land elections may (have) become uncoupled from the federal electoral process, and, if they have, to explore the implications for party competition in Germany. Initially, an overview is presented of the relevant theoretical models that can help unpack the relationship between different electoral arenas. Secondly, how these ideas have been applied to national and sub-national electoral competition in Germany is outlined, before an examination of the 'fit' of the data in both the pre- and post-unification periods. We conclude with reflections on two key features that have regularly surfaced in Gordon Smith's writings: party system change and political stability.     

Electoral Cycles, Party Organization and Mobilization in Canada

Canadian political parties oscillate between periods of inter-election quiescence and electoral year mobilization. In this paper we measure, across a series of elections, organizational activity in inter-election periods as parties develop strategic positions and seek to reshape their bases, and then their subsequent mobilization strategies and successes. Our research strategy employs ecological models rooted in electoral district level data including party resources and activity (from annual financial accounts), census data describing the electoral districts, as well as conventional aggregate electoral data. Our initial models utilise evidence from Ontario, Canada's largest province, and cover several electoral cycles that witnessed a string of governmental turnovers. This analysis provides a more nuanced model of party systems than those based on simple election results. Even in a period of remarkable electoral flux, party activity and success appear to be deeply rooted in the diverse constituency social and political contexts of the system.     

Electoral Competition and the New Party System in Mexico

Mexico's former opposition parties had specific social bases that would not, on their own, have catapulted either opposition party into power. In the 1990s, specific regional bases of support developed for the parties, reflecting their efforts to develop their organizations more locally. Nationally, this led to the emergence of two parallel two-party systems, PAN-PRI competition in the north and center-west and PRD-PRI competition in the south. In parallel, a proregime-antiregime cleavage came to dominate the Mexican party system, which, combined with local-level opposition efforts to oust the PRI, created new incentives for the opposition parties to abandon past emphases on ideological differences and to act like catch-all parties instead. The regime cleavage fostered the dealignment of the Mexican electorate, a process that promoted the development of catch-all parties. Movement within the parties to behave like catch-all parties has not come without internal tensions, but electoral dynamics prove powerful inducements to catch-all behavior.     

The Electoral Success of Beauties and Beasts

Les prises de positions, les programmes politiques ou encore les résultats précédents des candidats et des partis n'expliquent que partiellement leur succès électoral. D'autres mécanismes, plus simples, jouent aussi un rôle. Dans cet article, nous explorons l'influence de l'attractivité physique sur le nombre de votes de préférence reçus par 744 candidats à l’élection au Conseil national en Suisse en 2007. Le système électoral suisse de scrutin proportionnel avec liste ouverte offre une excellente opportunité d’étudier de tels effets, car les électeurs ne choisissent pas simplement entre partis ou entre candidats, mais également entre candidats au sein du même parti. Nous démontrons un effet robuste de l'attractivité physique sur le nombre de votes de préférence reçus par un candidat. L'effet est aussi important pour les femmes que pour les hommes. Cette influence de l'attractivité est essentiellement liée au fait que les candidats attractifs ont une plus grande probabilité d’être remarqués.     

Individual and Contextual Determinants of Electoral Participation

Individual‐level explanations of electoral participation typically argue that non‐voting is determined by a combination of facilitative and motivational factors. We advance the argument that, beyond individual characteristics, there are pivotal contextual features which enable or impede individual action through specific incentive structures. Thus, contextual factors influence the individual propensity to vote or to abstain. For the first time the data of Selects 2003 allows for the testing of contextual effects, at least on the cantonal level. Several multilevel analyses show that high party competition, compulsory voting, and strong Catholicism foster individual participation. The findings clearly indicate that an individual's propensity to vote is influenced by personal characteristics as well as by cantonal attributes.     

Casino Interests,Fujian Tongxianghui and Electoral Politics in Macao

The study of hometown associations has been traditionally focused on their social and cultural activities, but little research has been conducted on their political and electoral participation. The direct elections held for the Legislative Assembly in September 2013 in the Macao Special Administrative Region were characterised by the emergence of a clear triangular relationship between casino interests, Fujianese tongxianghui (a hometown association or an interest group with members sharing the same locality ties) and electoral politics. The prominent victory of an electoral group led by the Fujianese tongxianghui and represented under the umbrella of the United Citizens Association of Macao (UCAM) was unprecedented in Macao’s political participation and historical development. As a community leader of the Fujian community, Chan Meng Kam formed the UCAM to perform multiple functions: protecting his casino interests, articulating the interests of the Fujianese and the society vis-à-vis the casino state, acting as an intermediary between the Macao government and ordinary citizens, especially in the northern district which is the power base of the UCAM, and serving as a united front machinery for a unique sub-ethnic interest group to win the hearts and minds of the people of Macao.     

Ritual and Rhythm in Electoral Systems: A Comparative Legal Account

Ritual and Rhythm in Electoral Systems: A Comparative Legal Account. By Graeme Orr (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), pp.xiv + 223. £70.00 (cloth).     

1902 and the Origins of Preferential Electoral Systems in Australia*

Australia is the birthplace of the two main forms of preferential electoral voting — the Alternative Vote (AV) and the Single Transferable Vote (STV) methods. Accident and force of circumstances largely explain their introduction. The Hughes Government introduced the AV system in 1918 in an attempt to prevent the right‐of‐centre parties from splitting their support to the benefit of the ALP. In 1948 the Chifley Government moved to replace the Senate's preferential block system with the STV method in an attempt to electorally contain Menzies. Yet credit also needs be given to the deliberate efforts and clear intentions of their designers. The electoral systems proposed in 1902 were ahead of their time. Indeed, 1902 marked an important step in the design of Australia's electoral system. Once the debate had crystallized around the relative merits of preferential methods, it was only a matter of time before the Commonwealth would see their adoption.     

越南选举制度改革:历程、特征与展望

随着革新开放的起步,包括立法选举、基层自治组织选举和党内选举在内的越南选举制度改革也相继启动.越南选举制度改革呈现出五个基本特征:改革时间普遍较晚;遵循立法选举→基层自治组织选举→党内选举的改革顺序;实行渐进式改革策略;采用自上而下且持续推进的改革方式;改革程度呈现阶梯形,立法选举比较成熟,基层选举开始步入制度化轨道,而党内选举正由试点转向推广.越南选举制度改革已经进入了良性的发展轨道,只要革新开明的越共高层始终保持渐进式的改革策略和自上而下且持续推进的改革方式,越南选举制度改革一定会稳步向前迈进.     

Electoral Reform, Institutional Change, and Party Adaptation in Uruguay

Uruguay's stable, institutionalized party system has undergone substantial changes in recent years, both from the increasing electoral strength of the left and from changes made to the electoral system in 1996. Analyzing the debut of that new system in the 1999 national and 2000 municipal elections, this article concludes that Uruguay is moving from what was a fairly evenly divided three-party system to one in which the longstanding traditional parties will confront, as a bloc, the stronger left. The electoral analysis shows that the bloc dynamic took over whenever elections were close between the left and one of the traditional parties.