Political Parties and Governors as Determinants of Legislative Behavior in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, 1988–2006

This article examines the relative importance of regional and national forces in shaping the behavior of Brazilian legislators at the national level. A widely held view is that national legislators respond to state pressures in making decisions, rather than pressures from the national government. Governors not only can influence national debates but also can determine outcomes by exerting control over their states' legislative delegations. This article examines a dataset of all roll-call votes in the Chamber of Deputies between 1989 and 2006 to isolate and evaluate the impact of local pressures on legislative voting. Spanning the terms of five presidents and five different congresses, the data show that the local influence is weaker than the national on the voting decisions of individual legislators and the voting cohesion of state delegations. Alternative institutional resources allow the central government to counteract the centrifugal pressures of federalism and other institutional influences.     

Determinants of Extreme Right Reappearance in Cyprus: The National Popular Front (ELAM), Golden Dawn's Sister Party

The article focuses on the reappearance of the extreme right in Cyprus, with the aim of understanding the wider trends and local structural determinants that favoured its return. The research examines both the structure of opportunity favouring the reappearance of the extreme right—i.e. the current economic crisis and unemployment, the legitimacy crisis of the political and party systems, and the political and institutional context—and the way the extreme-right party (National Popular Front – ELAM) responded to these opportunities, capitalising on its special relationship with the Greek Golden Dawn. This paper will argue that the extreme right is the outgrowth of a systemic (economic and political) crisis, as well as a reflection of how Cypriot political actors regard and react to the extreme right's signatory issues.     

Gender Gaps in Civic and Political Participation in Latin America

This article examines whether there is gender segmentation in civic participation in Latin America, and whether such segmentation is related to gender differences in political participation. Confirming the findings of other studies, this analysis indicates that there is gender segmentation in civic associational activities, and that men are more involved than women in political activities, except for voting. Among those involved in civic activities, however, women attend meetings more often than men or about equally in all types of activities under consideration, except for sports and recreational pursuits. This highlights the need to differentiate between type and intensity of civic participation and provides empirical evidence that Latin American women have strong community ties through a variety of organizations. The regression analysis shows that civic engagement has a positive effect on political participation but that the magnitude of that effect varies by gender depending on the activity.     

The ‘ballot and the brick’: protest,voting and non-voting in post-apartheid South Africa

Over the last decade, protest has become an enduring feature of the post-apartheid political landscape. Despite this wave of protest, the African National Congress (ANC) has largely retained its dominant status. The endurance of the ANC’s electoral support in spite of the high levels of protest has led Susan Booysen to conclude that protests in South Africa form part of a ‘dual repertoire’ of political contestation. She argues that protests are used to signal grievances to the ANC between elections but that, ultimately, people remain loyal to the party of liberation. This article interrogates Booysen’s claim through advancing an analysis of voting district and ward-level data in protest hotspots. The article highlights weaknesses in the methodological base of Booysen’s thesis. By analysing the support for the ANC amongst the estimated eligible voting-age population, this article suggests a different relationship between voting and protesting in post-apartheid South Africa.     

Judicial Interaction on the Latham Court: A Quantitative Study of Voting Patterns on the High Court 1935-1950

This article examines voting patterns in two sub-periods of the Latham Court (1935-1940 and 1940-1950), where voting is defined as a decision (and associated judgements) by the Justices participating in the disposition of a particular case. There are two main findings. First, from 1935 to 1940 there was a clear four-Justice core consisting of Justices Sir George Rich, Sir Owen Dixon, Herbert Vere Evatt and Sir Edward McTiernan. Over this period, both Chief Justice Sir John Latham and Justice Sir Hayden Starke were outside the core. Second, with the retirement of Justice Evatt, and appointment of Justice Sir Dudley Williams in 1940, the decision-making structure of the Court changed. From 1940 to 1950 there was a loose five-Justice core consisting of Chief Justice Latham, Justices Rich, Dixon, McTiernan and Williams with Justice Starke on the outside. The article argues that observed voting patterns can be explained in terms of personal relationships and ideological differences between the Justices.     

Reforming Local Government in Germany: Institutional Changes and Performance Impacts

The article analyses trajectories and impacts of local government reforms in Germany. It scrutinises four major approaches of reform that have affected the local authorities since the beginning of the 1990s: decentralisation, privatisation, administrative reforms (‘New Steering Model’) and the direct election of mayors. The objective of the article is to encompass the multifaceted elements and effects of local government reform in Germany. Firstly, the author examines the institutional changes that have occurred in the local councils. Secondly, the broader effects and impacts of the institutional transformations are dealt with, analysing how the latter has enhanced performance, steering capacity and political accountability. Finally, the author evaluates the extent to which the reforms have put their mark on the inherited and historic tradition of the German local government system.     

Uncounted Votes: Informal Voting in the House of Representatives as a Marker of Political Exclusion in Australia

This article examines the implications of high levels of informal (or invalid) voting in Australian national elections using a social exclusion framework. The rate of the informal vote is an indicator of social and political exclusion with particular groups of Australians experiencing inordinate electoral disadvantage. Poorer voters, voters from non‐English speaking backgrounds and those with low education levels are especially disadvantaged by factors peculiar to the Australian voting experience. We begin by exploring the character and pattern of informal voting and then canvass the technical and socio‐economic factors which explain it. We conclude by considering proposed options for reducing informality, some of which are: the abandonment of compulsory voting, major structural change to the voting system as well as ballot re‐design, electoral education and community information initiatives.     

LAW,TRANSLATION, AND VOICE

The channeling of popular struggles through legal cases is central to the strategy of the emerging “rights defense” movement in China, linking grassroots contention with professional mediators who translate grievances into the institutional environment of law. This was the case in an unusual, ultimately unsuccessful campaign in 2005 to remove an elected village chief in Taishi Village in Guangdong, China, by legal means. While the grievances that sparked the campaign were about the unequal distribution of the benefits from village development, the strategy of instituting a recall procedure and the framing of the campaign in terms of democracy and rule of law obscured distinctly gendered issues of poverty and inequality in the village, even though women were among the most visible protesters. This article employs a “sociology of translation” to link framing processes and power dynamics, thus proposing a methodological approach to reconnecting framing with other aspects of movements. In the Taishi case, the translation of the dispute into the language of law had contrary effects: it opened the door to a legitimate, if temporary, public space for the airing of villagers' claims. At the same time, translation legitimized the voices of “experts” who then became de facto leaders in this public space; it also increasingly shifted the action to the internet, to which the villagers apparently had no access. This analysis raises questions about whether such strategies may result in either the formation of durable rights-based identities among grassroots participants or a sense of being connected to a broader social movement.     

What Determines Foreign Policy in Latin America? Systemic versus Domestic Factors in Argentina,Brazil, and Mexico, 1946–2008

Is it domestic politics or the international system that more decisively influences foreign policy? This article focuses on Latin America's three largest powers to identify patterns and compare outcomes in their relations with the regional hegemon, the United States. Through a statistical analysis of voting behavior in the UN General Assembly, we examine systemic variables (both realist and liberal) and domestic variables (institutional, ideological, and bureaucratic) to determine their relative weights between 1946 and 2008. The study includes 4,900 votes, the tabulation of 1,500 ministers according to their ideological persuasion, all annual trade entries, and an assessment of the political strength of presidents, cabinets, and parties per year. The findings show that while Argentina's voting behavior has been determined mostly by domestic factors and Mexico's by realist systemic ones, Brazil's has a more complex blend of determinants, but also with a prevalence of realist systemic variables.     

Neo-Nazism in an Established Democracy: The Persistence of Golden Dawn in Greece

The literature predicts that extremist right-wing parties like the Greek Golden Dawn (GD) are doomed to stay in the margins of electoral competition, scaring away voters with their authoritarian views and violent tactics. Defying scholarly expectations and despite the criminal prosecution of its leadership, GD increased its electoral strength in the May 2014 European elections. The article contrasts the neo-Nazi GD with Western European radical right parties and examines the factors that facilitated the persistence of such an extreme political party in an established European democracy. It shows how GD managed to capitalise on the de-legitimation of Greek political institutions and, through its organisational activity, present itself as a socially legitimate anti-system alternative.     

The Southern Cameroons and minority rights in Cameroon

Advocating for Anglophone succession in a predominantly Francophone country, the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) purports to address Anglophone marginalisation. The Cameroonian regime, however, views them as terrorists. What is the likelihood of a peaceful secession or resolution of Anglophone grievances? This article examines the role of the SCNC in the struggle for minority rights in Cameroon, in the context of a failed democratic state.     

Suffrage Extensions and Voting Patterns in Latin America: Is Mobilization a Source of Decay?

This article examines whether changes in electoral participation contributed to electoral volatility in Latin America between 1945 and 2000. As a result of literacy voting requirements and authoritarian interludes that disenfranchised large portions of the population, new voters in Latin America probably had different political interests from the previous electorate and were not socialized to electoral politics. The article considers the hypothesis that the inclusion of new voters with different interests produces an immediate, short‐term change in aggregate voting patterns, and a lack of socialization of new voters generates lingering instability in electoral behavior. Accounting for confounding factors, the analysis of legislative elections in 12 countries indicates that the expansion of the electorate temporarily disrupted voting patterns in Latin America but did not lead to long‐run party system decay.     

Understanding Political Knowledge and its Influence on Voting Preferences in the 2007 Federal Election

In this article we propose a model to explain how voters’ perceptions of their ideological proximity to a party affect their propensity to vote for that party. We argue that political knowledge plays a crucial moderating role in the relationship between party proximity and voting propensity. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between institutional knowledge (information about the political system) and party knowledge (information about the parties’ left–right positions). An analysis of survey data from the 2007 Swiss federal elections supports our main hypothesis that party knowledge enhances the link between party proximity and voting propensity. Institutional knowledge may have additional influence, but clear evidence for this effect was obtained only for propensities to vote for the Swiss People's Party (SVP). Overall, the impact of political knowledge was found to be substantial, even after controlling for the outstanding influence of party identification and other predictors of voting propensities.     

Career Paths in the PLA Rocket Force: What They Tell Us

ABSTRACT

This article applies a form of organizational analysis to the military institution responsible for China’s nuclear weapons, the PLA Rocket Force and its predecessor, the Second Artillery. Analyzing the ways in which this military institution manages and allocates its human capital can offer potential insights into both China’s operational practices and the institutional and strategic priorities of the country’s missile forces. Specifically, the article examines career paths of PLA officers in the Rocket Force, with a particular focus on those officers who eventually rise to the ranks of senior leadership. The analysis yields evidence that senior leaders are more likely to have served in the Rocket Force’s premier conventionally-armed missile base, that there is an informal institutional hierarchy among the missile bases, and that, at least at the personnel level, there is some separation between conventional and nuclear units. These findings have important implications for assessing potential escalation dynamics in a possible conflict between China and the United States and for forecasting the future development of China’s missile forces.     

Really ‘Two Deeply Divided Electorates’? German Federal Elections 1990–2013

It has become both a tradition and a key feature of electoral studies after 1990 to frame the debate about German voting behaviour in terms of East and West. To study national voting patterns has become a synonym for comparing both parts of the country. The corresponding findings are frequently interpreted as an answer to the recurring question whether the Germans (still) form a disunited electorate or not. However, the comparative look at electoral results in East and West conceals regional fragmentation within both areas – the key for evaluating the relevance of East–West frictions. By analysing those aspects, which are widely believed to yield deep East–West gaps, the article shows that only left-wing voting and electoral turnout indicate two unchangingly distinct voting habits for the complete post-unification time. Right-wing voting (divergence) and volatility (convergence) in turn were subject to major shifts.     

Conscience Voting in the Australian Federal Parliament*

This article examines the merits of conscience voting and the historical record of parties imposing discipline when matters of individual conscience are raised in the Australian federal parliament. It examines three examples of conscience voting in which legislators were freed from their normal obligation to vote as their party requires. These involved bills to do with euthanasia, research involving embryonic stem cells, and the abortion drug RU486 — all issues posing parliamentarians with difficult questions of personal morality and highlighting the contentious intersection between religion and politics. Voting records on these bills are examined in detail as is the interaction, once party discipline was removed, between the voting decision and residual party loyalty, gender and religious affiliation. Although parties allowed legislators to vote according to their conscience, party differences remained apparent. However, gender and religious variables did challenge majority party opinion. Conscience voting remains the exception rather than the rule in the Australian parliament. Party leaders on both sides prefer predictable outcomes and to retain executive control of the legislative process.     

German Voters in Times of Crisis: The Impact of Perceptions and Economic Context on Electoral Behaviour

This paper analyses the connection between economic context, voters’ individual assessment of the economy, and party identification, taking the German national elections of 2009 as an example. Based on the results of multinomial and multilevel regression models, the article shows that partisanship moderates how the economy affects the vote. In cases of increasing unemployment in the constituency, voters are less likely to vote for the Social Democrats instead of the CDU and the opposition. This effect is particularly strong amongst voters who report that they identify with the Social Democrats. Regarding the effect of voters’ assessment of the national economy, the results are different. In this case, a better evaluation of the regional economy increases the probability to vote for right-wing parties – notably amongst voters without partisanship. These findings suggest that the moderating effect of partisanship on the economy’s impact on voting behaviour should not be overestimated. What is more, this analysis implies that research on economic voting should always account for both contextual factors and voters’ personal assessment of the economy, as these measures reveal different dimensions of economic voting.     

Podemos and Ciudadanos Shake up the Spanish Party System: The 2015 Local and Regional Elections

With a very high unemployment rate but at the first stage of a timid economic recovery, Spain held regional and local elections in May 2015. The election results showed the fall of traditional parties and the emergence of new forces and citizens’ platforms, which increased the fragmentation of the party system. The PP (Partido Popular – Popular Party) continued to be the most voted-for party but post-election agreements brought the left to power in eight of the 14 regions that held elections, ending four years of conservative general dominance. After commenting on the context, the campaign and the results of the elections, this article explores the main characteristics of the new party competition and examines the profile of those voting for new political alternatives.     

The Persisting Ambiguity of Empire

Two American political scientists and a Ukrainian sociologist analyze the results of Ukraine's 1998 parliamentary elections. The purpose is to test propositions about the cognitive organization of voters' attitudes about issues and evaluations of the political parties that seek to mobilize their vote. The article then examines differences on these scores between the East and West of the country. A test is provided of the spatial model of voting that has been found to be a successful predictor of belief organization in other countries and milieux.     

A fissure in ‘unanimous democracy’: parliamentary contestations over property rights on land in early Republican Turkey

The parliamentary politics of Turkey's one-party regime (1925–1946) has been described as a ‘unanimous democracy’, particularly on account of the absence of a voting opposition. Many scholars consider the Law for Providing Land to Farmers of 1945 as the first instance of parliamentary opposition in the one-party legislature. The current article challenges this widespread view and argues that property rights on land tended to provoke backlashes even before 1945. It examines the making of the deportation, land distribution and settlement laws of the 1920s and 1930s, all of which sanctioned intervention into property relations on land in the form of the expropriation of landowners. Going beyond an exclusive focus on voting patterns, this article traces parliamentary resistance by examining how government bills changed as they proceeded through both the reviewing committees and the general assembly. It links the birth of a full-fledged parliamentary opposition in 1945 to the previous waves of discontent and shows that property rights on land was a constant fissure in the early Republic's unanimous democracy.