The election timing advantage: Empirical fact or fiction?

Do non-fixed election dates in Westminster parliamentary democracies create an unfair incumbent advantage? The consensus in the literature is that the incumbent party can gain an advantage at the ballot box by controlling election timing (Bakvis, 2001; Docherty, 2010; Smith, 2004; White, 2005; Wolinetz, 2005). Surprisingly, however, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this claim. We address this lacuna by providing an empirical test of whether the election-timing power matters for incumbent vote support. We do so by employing an innovative web-based voting experiment. Our findings show that the government does gain an advantage by timing an election when it is to their advantage, but the context is limited to conditions where the election follows immediately after a heightened level of positive government coverage.     

The 2020 presidential election and beliefs about fraud: Continuity or change?

The 2020 presidential campaign was plagued by charges of voter fraud both before and after the election took place. While past literature finds that electoral losers are most likely to express misgivings about election integrity, little else is known about the characteristics of individuals who exhibit these beliefs or how the beliefs have changed over time. Employing national surveys from 2012, 2016, 2018, and 2020, we examine the levels of pre-election expectations of fraud in the event of an electoral loss over time, as well as the individual-level correlates of beliefs in a range of election-related conspiracy theories prominent in 2020. Our analysis reveals that beliefs in election fraud are common and stable across time, and only occasionally relate to partisanship. Moreover, we find that, even accounting for the influence of partisan motivated reasoning, several psychological orientations––conspiracy thinking, anomie, dark triad personality traits, and denialism––play a unique role in promoting perceptions of voter fraud.     

Culture or taxes? The conceptions of citizenship of migrants and local factory workers in Italy

A number of studies of everyday citizenship have shown that the way in which the ordinary population of a state thinks of citizenship is not unilaterally determined by the conceptions present in state's citizenship law. This work looks at what migrants and local factory workers in Ferrara (Northern Italy) think of citizenship, and what conceptions can be found behind their opinions. The research is based on 60 in-depth interviews with migrants of different origins and professions and local factory workers. While scholars consider the Italian citizenship law to be closed towards both the immigrants and those born in Italy from non-citizens, most of the interviewees have expressed the preference for the ius soli and shorter residence requirements. Almost all the interviewees believed that people with a penal record should not be naturalised, and some of the interviewees have expressed cultural conceptions of citizenship that could be demanding of the candidates. However, the stronger consensus was for a lighter, economic conception of the citizen as anyone who works and pays taxes.     

The Federal Spending Power in Canada: Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?

For the past 40 years, the federal spending power in Canadahas been one of the most contentious issues in federal-provincialrelations, and it has been central to Quebec's dissatisfactionwith the Canadian federation. The dispute is rooted in two differentconceptions of federalism and different perceptions of the federalcompact in Canada. English-speaking Canadians tend to view thefederal spending power as the source of highly valued "national"social programs, while the government of Quebec maintains thatthe federal spending power constitutes an invasion of provincialautonomy and, as such, poses a threat to the cultural distinctivenessof the Quebec nation. The governments of Canada and Quebec havereached a tenuous modus operandi, but the fundamental conflictremains unsolved.     

Judicial policy‐making in Italy: The constitutional court

This study focuses on the Italian Constitutional Court, the newest and most prestigious addition to a judicial tradition that can be traced as far back as the Roman Empire. This court has indeed been an effective policy‐making body, particularly in matters of civil liberties and church‐state relations, as well as in compelling the legislative branch, where it has been so charged, to complete the drafting of the Constitution. The Court has faltered at times in defending its independence, and this account argues that life appointments might be a viable means of achieving the goal of a constitutional body that serves ‘nee spe nee metu’     

The 2015 Catalan election: a de facto referendum on independence?

The 2015 Catalan regional election, held on 27 September, was framed as a proxy for an independence referendum by the pro-independence parties. This was meant to bypass the PP-led central government's opposition to permit an official referendum. After an election campaign clearly dominated by the independence issue, the results delivered a majority of seats but not of votes for the pro-independence camp. However, the reading of the results as a de facto referendum is not straightforward. Growing polarization around the independence issue resulted in the emergence of two main blocs, for and against independence; in the polarization of stances within the blocs; and in substantial changes in the Catalan party system. The lack of agreement between the secessionist parties over the reappointment of Artur Mas as president almost triggered a new election but, in a last-minute move, Mas stepped aside. The new government aims to declare independence in 18 months.     

The 1990 German federal election and the national unification: A watershed in German electoral history?

The December 1990 German election resulted in a dramatic weakening of the Social Democratic and Green opposition parties, a moderate strengthening of the government coalition, and a unprecedented low voter turnout. This article explains the electoral outcome in terms of the interpretive frames each party employed to address the issue of unification in the election campaign in light of their past voter appeals and stances on the German question. Within the Social Democratic and the Green left‐libertarian discourse, it was particularly difficult to assign a meaningful role to the concept of the nation and national unification.     

Is there an incumbency advantage or cost of ruling in proportional election systems?

This paper investigates the effects of political representation on electoral outcomes at the party and coalition levels in proportional election systems using data from Swedish local government elections. There are two notions of representation, namely, to hold seats and to belong to the ruling coalition. I refer to the effect of the former as the incumbency effect and the effect of the latter as the ruling effect. The discontinuous variation in the seat share as the vote share varies for parties is used to isolate exogenous variation in incumbency. The discontinuous variation in ruling at the 50% seat share cutoff for coalitions is used in order to exogenous variation in ruling. I find that incumbency determines the distribution of 12% of the total vote, which is similar to the advantage found in majoritarian systems. I find no ruling effect, contrary to the commonly found cost of ruling in proportional systems.     

US election: Clinton versus whom?

With such a crowded field, predicting the future of the Republican contest is more difficult than usual. The task for the victor will be to emerge from the primary campaign without having disqualified himself from appealing to a national electorate.