How Ireland Voted 2007: The Full Story of Ireland's General Election

The European Union views the spread of economic prosperity and rule of law to countries emerging from dictatorship as among its primary goals when considering countries as candidates for membership. Existing literature often suggests that EU membership confers significant benefits on the accession countries, and these countries are willing to undergo costly and difficult reforms to reap these benefits. Through strict membership conditions, member states force accession countries to commit to democracy. Drawing on theoretical work in the fields of law, politics, and economics, this article reassesses the conventional wisdom. It argues that, under certain conditions, the reforms required of would-be members could have the perverse effect of undermining the establishment of legitimate law in transitional democracies. Using an agent-based model, the article elucidates a theory in which placing laws on the books around which no societal consensus exists can create perverse incentives for citizens and government officials and may lead to an erosion of the rule of law.     

The 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly Election

The result of the assembly election in Northern Ireland in June 1998 was a victory for those who support the assembly, but it was not such a triumph for David Trimble and the Ulster Unionist Party. I will examine both the Unionist vote and the Nationalist vote and the consequences.     

How I came to write The Hut Six Story

Gordon Welchman was a Cambridge mathematician and one of the key figures working at Bletchley Park (BP) during World War Two. In 1974, he decided to write his own memoir following the publication of other books on the subject. His book ‘The Hut Six Story’ was published in both the US and UK in early 1982 and was the first to include technical details about the BP operation. Pressure on his publishers from the NSA and GCHQ ultimately resulted in the book being withdrawn from their lists. On 14 May 1982, he wrote this previously unpublished paper, explaining his motives.     

Election observer effects: A field experiment in the Russian Duma election of 2011

The literature on elections and election monitoring is divided between those who take a skeptical view, suggesting that monitors are often political rather than objective in their judgments, and those who see monitors as a real force for cleaner, more honest elections. Studies that use field experiments to look for the effect of monitors generally support the optimists, indicating that the mere presence of election observers can have powerful effects. This is surprising given the extent of the resources available to incumbents who wish to conduct electoral fraud. We present the results of an experiment in which 768 observers were randomly assigned to polling stations in 21 cities in Russia in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Unlike most previous studies of election observers, our results suggest that observer effects on turnout and vote for the ruling party are small. The results suggest the need to study more carefully the circumstances that shape the impact of observation missions.     

Dealignment,De-legitimation and the Implosion of the Two-Party System in Greece: The Earthquake Election of 6 May 2012

Abstract

This article examines the political effects of the global economic recession on Greece in the period from 2010 up to the last weeks of the campaign period for the national elections of 6 May 2012. Our objectives are threefold. First we seek to contextualize its impact and show how the Greek party system departed from the nearly three decades of stability after 2009 and entered a period electoral fluidity and dealignment. Second we identify the demographic and structural characteristics of that dealignment process. Finally we interpret and compare the effect of the economic crisis and other issues on vote choice in the 2012 general election.     

Election Laws,Mobilization, and Turnout: The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform

State governments have experimented with a variety of election laws to make voting more convenient and increase turnout. The impacts of these reforms vary in surprising ways, providing insight into the mechanisms by which states can encourage or reduce turnout. Our theory focuses on mobilization and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of election laws. We conduct both aggregate and individual‐level statistical analyses of voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The results show that Election Day registration has a consistently positive effect on turnout, whereas the most popular reform—early voting—is actually associated with lower turnout when it is implemented by itself. We propose that early voting has created negative unanticipated consequences by reducing the civic significance of elections for individuals and altering the incentives for political campaigns to invest in mobilization.     

Mission Accomplished: The Wartime Election of 2004

The war in Iraq, so the widely accepted view, hurt the reelection of George W. Bush. We contend, to the contrary, that the war helped him get reelected. First, we show that his victory fits the dominant pattern of wartime elections in American history. Second, we find that Bush’s approval ratings benefited from a complex rally where the Iraq war prolonged rather than diminished the 9/11 effect; most Americans affirmed rather than disputed a link between the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Third, while Bush’s approval proves sensitive to U.S. casualties in the Iraq war, any damage to his standing prior to the election was mitigated by sufficient popular support for that war. And finally, on Election Day, Bush was able to garner the vote of two critical blocks with favorable feelings about the Iraq war, be it the decision to invade or the prospect of success.