The US mid-term elections of 1982

The 1982 US election completed the destruction of the myth that 1980 saw a Republican landslide. It disappointed the election-eve expectations of the Democrats, but was far crueller to the earlier hopes of the Republicans, though their financial advantage kept their losses down. Old political forces-parties and unions-played a more active part than in recent years, and turnout rose for the first time for two decades. The results should make internal differences less divisive among Democrats, more so among Republicans, especially with the crushing exposure of the bogus claims of the ‘New Right’. But if the economy recovers, so may the Republican party.     

Conducting the elections in Zimbabwe 1980

The Zimbabwe elections in 1980 presented unusual administrative difficulties. They were conducted in some haste, during a cease fire in the civil war, and when stable administration was not established over the whole country. Further, the political settlement and re-establishment of an internationally recognized government hinged on popular and international acceptance of the elections as having been fairly conducted. The problems faced in the administration of the elections went beyond what are discussed in standard works on elections and the article describes what the main problems were in conducting the elections and facilitating effective supervision of them.     

British Employment Policy in the 1980s: Learning from the American Experience

During the 1980s the Thatcher Government implemented numerous changes to the British employment system. Most of these changes had the effect of linking the receipt of welfare benefits to an individual's willingness to participate actively within a government sponsored employment or training scheme. These changes culminated in the Social Security Act (1989) which linked the receipt of welfare payments to an individual's active job search and willingness to accept any officially offered job after a maximum grace period of 13 weeks. While these changes are important in their own right, more interestingly, most trace their origins back to the American welfare-to-work system initiated by the Reagan administration during the early 1980s. This article will demonstrate why the Thatcher government turned to the United States in the development of their employment policy. Once an explanation for this has been provided the article will highlight the key policies transferred by the Thatcher Government in the development of the British welfare-to-work system. This entire analysis will be placed within a policy transfer framework in order to illustrate its usefulness in the analysis of policy development.     

Turnout in recent American presidential elections

The well-noted decline in the participation of Americans in presidential elections since the early sixties reversed in the 1984 election, although only slightly. An improved national mood appears to have contributed little to increasing turnout. However, the gap in participation between the wealthier and poorer widened, while that between men and women narrowed and reversed direction, and belonging to a group associated with an identity affected participation more powerfully. Taken together, these findings indicate shifts in patterns of turnout corresponding to shifts in the lines of politicized interests. Analysis of the participation of blacks finds little evidence for electoral mobilization by the Rainbow Coalition in 1984.     

Expectations for the 1982 mid-term U.S. congressional elections: An historical perspective

The record of U.S. mid-term elections since the mid-1940s is examined. The author explores the relationship of their results to those in the preceding Presidential year. Differential turnout does not seem to affect the outcome. Presidential popularity matters less than expected. But change in disposable income goes far to explain the scale of the electoral changes recorded. Party loyalty matters less for chances of re-election than mere incumbency. In 1982 reapportionment will help the Republicans but President Reagan's unpopularity will hurt them.     

Voters and roll call voting: The effect on congressional elections

The subject of this research is whether ideological preferences play a major role in explaining voters' refusal to reelect some members of the U.S. House of Representatives. If ideological control is important, one would expect to find a large difference between the voting record of a rejected incumbent and his or her replacement. In distinction, whenever voters must replace a congressman or congresswoman because that person had died in office or chose to run for higher office, the hypothesis of ideological tracking implies that the newly elected member of Congress will resemble his or her predecessor. The data confirm these hypotheses and show, as well, that ideological control exists within parties and not only between them; that the degree of voters' ideological control is as great over senior congressmen and congresswomen as over junior ones; and that voters' concern about ideology has increased over the last two decades.     

The American tradition of the experimental treatment of elections: A review essay

The American tradition of experimental investigation of electoral phenomenon indicates that the medium, as well as the message, is important. Highly controlled experiments give insight into the nature of voter decision making. The importance of partisanship is especially pronounced. Field experiments probe the effectiveness of the mediums of telephone, mail, and personal contact as well as the message dimensions of moralistic and rational appeals in actual electoral campaigns. Collectively, these experimental studies allow strong inferences about electoral behavior.     

Identifying the bandwagon effect in two-round elections

Albert Heckscher (1857–1897) was a Danish lawyer. In his dissertation (Bidrag till Grundlæggelse af en Afstemningslære), accepted in 1892 at the University of Copenhagen, Heckscher dealt with numerous issues related to voting, especially those related to vote-aggregation in parliaments, courts and committees. He knew the works of Condorcet and Borda quite well, and analyzed many topics that would nowadays fall into the domain of the theory of social choice. These include Condorcet-cycles, differences between Condorcet-effective rules and the Borda rule, strategic voting, the influence of the voting order under the parliamentary voting rules, the likelihood of single-peaked preference profiles, and the problems created by non-separable preferences. Heckscher’s treatment of the Judgment Aggregation Paradox is especially noteworthy. Although Kornhauser and Sager (Yale Law Journal 96: 82–117, 1986) are usually mentioned as the inventors of this problem, Heckscher’s earlier treatment confirms the suspicion that the problem is not of recent origin. Numerous issues studied in the post-Arrowian theory of voting may already be found in Heckscher’s dissertation; some of them have become subjects of systematic study only in the twenty-first century. It is argued that Albert Heckscher, the unknown nineteenth century Danish lawyer, deserves a place in the pantheon of the theory of social choice alongside his better known contemporaries Charles Dodgson and E. J. Nanson.     

A behavioral measure of the enthusiasm gap in American elections

What are the effects of a mobilized party base on elections? I present a new behavioral measure of the enthusiasm gap in a set of American elections to identify how the turnout rate of the party faithful varies across different contexts. I find that the advantaged party can see its registrants turn out by four percentage points more than the disadvantaged party in some elections, and that this effect can be even larger in competitive House districts. I estimate the net benefit to party vote share of the mobilized base, which is around one percentage point statewide, and up to one and one half points in competitive House contests. These results suggest that the partisan characteristics of an election have consequences not just for vote choice, but for the composition of the electorate.     

The effect of the choices available on voting behaviour: the two Japanese elections of 1993

Voters make their choices based on an interaction between their preferences and the options available. One cannot vote for a candidate or a party that is not running in one's district. Voting research has heretofore focused almost exclusively upon voter preferences, assuming that all the relevant options are available to all voters. In this paper, we seek to redress the balance somewhat by focusing on variation in the options available to voters in the 1993 Japanese general election. In that election, three new parties ran and were themselves a major issue in the campaign. Voters were asked to express themselves on the question, “should we break the mold of postwar politics by voting for a new party?” We demonstrate that electoral results and voting behavior both varied significantly between those electoral districts with, and those without, a new party option. There were, in effect, two elections in 1993, one in which voters chose between new and established parties and another in which voters chose from among the established parties only. We argue that one cannot assume that an electoral outcome reflects the “will of the people” without adding the important caveat, “given the available alternatives”.     

Mobilization and participation: Singapore in the 1980s

Singapore is an island state with no formal lower tier of government. The network of consultation and mobilization created after Independence in 1959 is now raising important issues of consensus and compliance. Twenty-five years of continuous one-party rule offer opportunities to evaluate the working of the mechanisms of integration and participation. In the late 1980s the highly urbanized, multi-ethnic society is placing new demands on the government, and questions of decentralization and feedback are high on the political agenda.     

The effect of relative economic performance on the outcome of gubernational elections

This study finds that one of the most important determinants of election outcomes in gubernatorial elections is the voter's familiarity with the candidates. When an incumbent governor seeks re-election, his party's share of the vote increases by about 7.3 percentage points, ceteris paribus. Likewise, when a former candidate represents the opposition party, the incumbent party's share of the vote decreases by about three percentage points, ceteris paribus. The electoral history of the state also has a significant effect on the share of the vote received by the incumbent party.The major finding of this study is that state economic conditions exert only a weak influence on the outcome of gubernatorial elections. Assuming that voters are rational, a major implication of this finding is that voters do not view a governor as being able to substantially influence a state's economy. If, during a gubernatorial campaign, voters view the candidates as having little or no control over the state economy they will evaluate candidates on the basis of non-economic positions.     

Intergovernmental Relations in the 1980s

Intergovernmental relations in West German cooperative federalismhave often been criticized as inefficient and inflexible. Theabolition of joint policymaking and the promotion of decentralizationhave been recommended in order to reduce interdependencies betweengovernments and to avoid overloading central policymaking. Suchproposals have usually been put forward without consideringthe governmental complexity that impedes large-scale reforms.However, a detailed analysis of federalism, focusing on processesrather than structures and on different policies rather thanaggregations, reveals that intergovernmental relations in the1980s are not the same as those in the 1960s or early 1970s.The inherent dynamics of intergovernmental relations have producedmany changes. These changes have contributed to the overallstability of West German federalism because they have reflectedflexible adaptations of relations among federal, Land, and localgovernments to new socioeconomic, sociocultural, and ecologicalchallenges. Hence, events of the 1980s provide an occasion forreassessing cooperative federalism.     

Explaining variation in concern about the outcome of presidential elections, 1960–1980

Since 1960 there has been a steady erosion in concern about the electoral outcome of presidential elections among the white electorate. An analysis of the six SRC-CPS presidential election surveys conducted between 1960 and 1980 shows that a substantial portion of the erosion of electoral concern can be accounted for by the weakening of partisan loyalties and the decline in feelings that the political system is responsive. More generally, the analysis suggests that extent of concern about the electoral outcome is primarily a long-term secular component and not a short-term, election-specific factor as is commonly assumed in the literature.     

Nuptiality during the 1980s in Cuba

"This study presents an analysis of the demographic characteristics, levels and tendencies followed by Cuban nuptiality during the 1980s. The author uses the data provided by the 1987... National Survey on Human Fertility and data recorded in the last Cuban census, taken in 1981, to evaluate the changes experienced by women of fertile age of various marital status--primarily those in legal marriage and consensual unions--, highlighting the differences between the two [and]...analyzing the two in terms of various socioeconomic attributes...." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

State Telecommunications Policy in the 1980s

The role of the states in provision of telecommunications services combines aspects of regulation, economic development policy, tax policy, and government procurement. A variety of policy experiments, contrasts sharply with a dearth of state action in telecommunications prior to 1982. The growing realization that the implications of decisions about telecommunications are no longer narrowly confined to regulation has spurred the active involvement of governors and legislators in many states.