Does fraud trump partisanship? The impact of contentious elections on voter confidence

Fraudulent elections can reduce citizen trust in elections and other political institutions. But what about the impact of contentious elections that resolve successfully, leading to democratizing change? Do national movements toward democracy trump individual experiences with electoral manipulation? Using public opinion survey data collected before and after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, we evaluate changes in voter confidence in electoral practices, political institutions, and democracy. Although national trends show increased voter confidence overall, subnational variation suggests pervasive partisan differences in opinions about election quality and institutional confidence. Remarkably, we find that direct exposure to fraud matters far less than anticipated; voters who were personally exposed to fraud felt no more or less confident than their co-partisans. We show that partisanship and the national electoral context may interact in ways that complicate the effects of democratizing elections, suggesting important avenues for future research.     

Electoral Determinants of Agrarian Power: Measuring Rural Decline in Japan

The Japanese farm sector illustrates the key measures of rural electoral influence in advanced industrialized societies and the principal causes of decline in the electoral basis of agrarian power. The political impact of the farm vote is sensitive to wider social, economic and demographic changes as well as to restructuring processes in electoral, organizational and party-political systems. In Japan's case the agricultural electorate continues to shrink along with the electoral profile of rural and semi-rural constituencies and the number of farm politicians in the Diet, although the orientation of the ruling conservative party towards the rural sector is strengthening in relative terms. The disproportionate enfranchisement of farm voters will be further reduced by electoral reform, which will generate potential gains and losses for the farm sector.     

The Global Climate Regime: Explaining Lagging Reform

There have been growing calls for reform of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). How have governments met the demand for action on climate change despite the lagging pace of UNFCCC reform? New qualitative data demonstrate that the institutional, sectoral, and technical characteristics of multilateral institutions have guided government choices in managing climate change issues. Institutional resources and sectoral participation in multilateral institutions have enabled governments to handle climate change issues outside the UNFCCC, reducing the need to invest in its reform as demand for action has grown. These specialized institutions are able to mitigate political disputes and facilitate greater efficacy in handling specific issues such as financing and emissions mitigation. They have mandates that overlap with the cross‐cutting nature of climate change, requiring no new mandates, which mitigates political disputes in managing specific climate issues.     

Prospects for the Two-party System in a Pluralising Political World

Political commentators argue that the major political parties are in decline. This article sets out evidence for this view: minor parties and independents securing 20 percent of the vote at federal elections, declining strength of voters' party identification, and issue movements playing a large role in setting the political agenda. Possible causes for these trends range from the political, such as policy failure, undermining traditional constituencies, and ignoring public opinion, to sociological forces, such as postmaterialism, individualism and serious disaffection. However, the article argues Labor and the Coalition will be the dominant political players for the foreseeable future. In most lower houses, the electoral system favours the major parties which on balance is a good thing. The major parties have taken concerns of interest groups into account, while balancing these against majority opinion. They simplify choice for an electorate only moderately interested in politics, and can be held accountable in a way minor parties and independents cannot.     

Economic globalization, job insecurity and the populist reaction

A striking change in the political party systems of many established democracies in recent years has been the rise to electoral and political prominence of right-wing populist parties. Moving beyond the usual anti-statism and racism attitudinal explanatory foci, this article posits that popular support for these parties is associated with the job insecurity that populist party leaders have attributed to deepening international economic integration, or economic globalization. The conceptualization of job insecurity is discussed and its expected relationship to the mercantilism of right-wing populist parties clarified. The hypothesis is tested in the specific context of support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party in the 1998 election to the Australian federal House of Representatives. The article concludes with a consideration of the wider implications of its findings.     

‘Voice and Equality’: Young People’s Politics in the European Union

Academics and policy-makers have highlighted the increasing disconnection between citizens and electoral politics in Europe. Declining citizen involvement in traditional forms of politics has manifested itself in lower voter turnout and a dramatic shrinkage in the membership of political parties. Citizens have turned to alternative forms of civic and political engagement. These trends are most marked amongst young people. Whilst a number of studies have examined the nature of political participation in Europe, and the participation of young people in individual countries or specific political activities (such as voting), hardly any research has looked at patterns of engagement ‘within’ a generation of young people across different democracies. This article examines the political participation of young Europeans in national democracies in 15 European Union member states. Previous studies have shown that citizens are increasingly moving away from electoral forms of participation towards alternative forms of engagement that are (for the population as a whole) much less socially equal. Using data from the European Social Survey, this article finds that the social inequalities of participation are (with the major exception of voting) much less profound for young people. This latter finding has important implications for public efforts to promote greater youth participation in democracy.     

The politics-violence frontier

ABSTRACT

This article analyses how early twenty-first century political activists in Italy construct the frontier between politics and violence. It puts these constructions into the context of more conventionally theoretical accounts of violence and politics. Analysis of internet discourse published by left/anarchist bloggers and group members focusses on how activists criticize the conventional view that electoral politics is non-violent, and endorse the view that violence is politics’ main means. This means that the role of violence in oppositional politics then has to be negotiated. Discourse analysis shows how ideas of resistance, and anti-state force, are articulated in such a way as to draw distinctions between us and them, and their politics and ours. The article discusses the significance of these articulations of the politics-violence distinction for the construction of political agency, and for the justification of forms of political action, seeking to show that boundary work is fundamental to political agency.     

The Politics of Postcapitalism: Labour and our Digital Futures

This article introduces the special issue on the politics of postcapitalism. Considering the theoretical foundations, empirical perspectives and political ramifications of claims made about a coming ‘post-work’ or ‘postcapitalist’ society, it maps existing debates through a discussion of two key recent texts, Paul Mason’s Clear Bright Future and Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism. It first surveys how the relationship between labour market trends, technological change and wider political-economic shifts is articulated in the postcapitalist literature. It then explores how concepts from Marx are deployed to depict social relations as a constraint on technological development and its utopian potentialities, leading to political demands for new class actors and electoral blocs centring on the new forms of economic and political activity associated with digital networks. It also considers the role of the state and how this theoretical and political approach envisions historical change, situating utopian visions of an incipient postcapitalist alternative to capitalism within the contemporary political context of authoritarian populism and challenges to liberal democracy. Finally, it explores the continuing relevance of humanism as a critical counterpoint to the social and philosophical agenda of present day ‘posthumanism’. It concludes that, in unfavourable political conditions, it would be strategically unwise to stake too much on an over-optimistic approach to the unfolding future. This outlook, it is suggested, carries considerable risks and consequences for a contemporary left in search of a viable electoral coalition and route back to power.     

THE POLITICS OF ROAD FUNDING: REMOTE ABORIGINAL COMMUNITIES AND FEDERALISM IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Abstract: This paper illustrates how remote Aboriginal communities shape rural road classification and funding policies in three Western Australian shires. The Australian federal system is characterised by a complex range of commonwealth and state governmental agencies competing for political space within different localities. Because Aborigines are constituents of the commonwealth and the state, a distinction is drawn between local government political activity, and politics that occur within the locality of a shire.
Success in influencing policy-making processes throughout the federal system stems from the participants' ability to exploit the system. The Aboriginal impact on road policy-making within remote localities is linked to electoral, bureaucratic, and sectional interest politics. These are features of governing and they provide a conceptual framework for the organisation of political activity by commonwealth, state, and local agencies, and Aboriginal communities.     

The Personal Vote in Australian Federal Elections

Although there has been little reliable evidence to date, the 'personal vote' for local Members of Parliament in Australian elections is generally thought to be negligible by political scientists. This article analyses new data from the 1987 Australian National Social Science Survey which demonstrate that the personal vote is a significant factor in federal lower house elections even when numerous other variables known to influence voting behaviour are controlled for. The data allow a calculation of the potential electoral effect of the personal vote which shows that it could be worth at least ³ per cent in some circumstances. The analysis tests for varying levels of personal voting in safe and marginal seats, Labor and coalition seats, urban and rural seats and according to the length of time the incumbent has been in office. Lastly, the electoral effects of the social background of local members are examined.     

Perceptions of Fairness and Support for Proportional Representation

This paper explores the causes and consequences of evaluations of the political system and support for electoral system change. In 1993, New Zealand voters adopted a referendum that fundamentally changed the way representatives are elected, moving from a plurality to a proportional (PR) electoral system. We examine the role of cynicism about the political system in adopting PR and how electoral change may shape evaluations of the political system. We expect that political minorities and those dissatisfied with the current performance of government are more likely to be cynical about the fairness of the political process and that these evaluations are related to support for PR. In turn, supporters of the referendum should judge the political system more favorably once the reform is implemented. Using panel data from the 1993 and 1996 New Zealand Election Studies, we find that support for PR is based on more general evaluations of the fairness of the political system and partisan self-interest. Those who supported PR and are politically aware are also more likely to have an increase in favorable evaluations of the political system.     

The Political Value of Land: Political Reform and Land Prices in Chile

In this article, we argue that when patron‐client relations are grounded in economic relationships, such as between landlord and worker, we should expect clientelism to influence not just how public policy, the state, and the political system work, but also how the economy works. We develop a simple model of the economic consequences of electoral clientelism when voting behavior can be observed. Landlords/patrons provide economic rents to workers, and in exchange workers vote for parties favored by landlords. As votes are used by the landlords to accumulate political rents, vote control increases the demand for labor and for land. The model implies that the introduction of the Australian ballot, which destroys this form of clientelism, should lead to a fall in the price of land in those areas where patron‐client relationships are strongest. We test the predictions of the model by examining in detail the evolution of land prices in Chile around May 31, 1958, for which we collected original data. A characteristic of rural Chile at this time were patron‐client relations based on the inquilinaje system, by which a worker, the inquilino, entered into a long‐term, often hereditary, employment relationship with a landlord and lived on his landlord’s estate. We show that the introduction of the Australian ballot in 1958 led to a fall of about 26% in land prices in the areas where these patron‐client relationships were predominant.     

The strategic behavior of the Italian Left in a risk-sharing framework

The failure of the communist systems in Eastern Europe, the collapse of two of the main Italian political parties due to their massive involvement in the corruption scandal which exploded in the early 1990s, and the change of the electoral system from proportional representation to plurality, caused a major revolution in the Italian political landscape. Within this scenario old and new parties have been shaping their electoral and political strategies. In this paper our primary interest is to demonstrate that the apparently divergent policies supported by the two main parties of the Italian Left could hide a probable electoral strategy to grab the moderate Italian electorate and, hence, to capture the governing majority necessary to rule the country. This will be done through an economic model of risk-sharing applied to plurality maximizer parties.     

The Impact of Economic Performance on Electoral Support in Sweden, 1967–1978*

This article investigates the impact of macroeconomic conditions on aggregate political support for governing parties in Sweden over the period 1967–1978. After reviewing survey evidence on the relative salience of economic and fiscal issues to the Swedish electorate, a novel, dynamic model of political support is presented. The model incorporates the ideas that voters evaluate economic performance relatively rather than absolutely, and that governments' mass political support is based on their cumulative performance records. The empirical results supply estimates of the impact of unemployment, inflation, the real income growth rate and the income effects of direct tax and transfer policies on political support. The evidence suggests that the responses of political support to reasonable movements in macroeconomic conditions are large enough to give economic management a pivotal role in electoral shifts.     

Economic Integration,Party Polarisation and Electoral Turnout

Recent research provides evidence that economic integration has a negative effect on electoral turnout. Taking up these recent findings, this article explores the causal chain in more detail. Specifically, it argues that one way by which economic integration affects the calculus of voting is through the positioning of political parties. The expectation is that the polarisation between parties on an economic left–right scale is lower the more integrated an economy is. Consequently, electoral turnout should be lower with less polarisation in the party system. The article employs aggregate-level data from legislative elections in 24 developed democracies. Using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project, evidence is found not only that economic integration has a negative effect on party polarisation as measured on an economic left–right dimension, but also that this in turn exerts a negative effect on electoral turnout.     

The Australian Environmental Policy Agenda

This paper seeks to identify major shifts in the Australian environmental policy agenda over the past fifty years, and discusses the possible causes of and variables affecting agenda change. The issue of what comprises ‘environment’ policy is discussed, with reference to overlaps and intersections with other policy sectors such as agriculture, public health, energy and regional affairs. While the diversity of the environment policy domain complicates any analysis of trends, there have been two persistent trends of (i) an expansion from a more narrowly to a more broadly defined suite of issue (from environment to sustainable development) and incorporation of environment into natural resource management, and (ii) an increasing diversity of policy instruments being used. Consistent with the wide variety of issues confronted, pragmatism and convenience are often as influential as political ideology or underlying trajectories. The drivers of policy change are diverse, including biophysical factors such as drought, political leaders and international policy developments, and punctuations are often better interpreted as intensification or redirections of past policy trajectories.     

Demythologising the petite bourgeoisie: The Italian case

The political volatility and economic instability of the petite bourgeoisie are taken for granted in most political and sociological analysis. Viewed as a pivotal force in historic and contemporary movements of the extreme right, it is widely believed to exercise a constant ‘threat’ potential, thus guaranteeing its protection throughout the post‐war period — above all in the Italian context where small economic entrepreneurs persist in substantial numbers. Using a variety of evidence, including electoral and survey materials, this article counterposes to the ‘pathological’ interpretation of the petite bourgeoisie an alternative profile, one that stresses its confidence, its stability of allegiance and its commitment to centrism.     

Inequalities in Non-institutionalised Forms of Political Participation: A Multi-level Analysis of 25 countries

Various studies suggest that while institutionalised and electoral forms of political participation are in decline in Western societies, non-institutionalised forms of participation (like demonstrating, political consumerism or signing petitions) are on the rise. However, this expansion of the political action repertoire of citizens also entails the question of equal participation opportunities. It can be argued that contemporary ideals of democratic participation assume an equal representation of citizens' interests. In this article we analyse the equality of participation patterns using comparative data from the 2004 ISSP survey. Our results suggest that non-institutionalised forms of participation increase patterns of inequality due to education but strongly reduce or even reverse gender and age inequalities. As such, both institutionalised and non-institutionalised forms of participation have specific (dis)advantages from the perspective of preserving equal access to democratic decision-making procedures.     

Village Elections in China: Cooperation between the State and the Peasantry

Village elections, as a policy response to developmental problems in rural China in the 1980s, were not designed to promote democracy in China. The process of village elections, however, has served as a new form of cooperation between the state and the peasantry over the last decade. To understand why an authoritarian regime introduced an electoral process to its countryside and why this electoral process of village elections has served as a new form of cooperation between the state and the peasantry over the last decade, we should try to understand where the congruence between the state and the peasantry was in this form of cooperation, what the role of the state was in this process, and what the implications of this electoral process for democracy were in China. The process of village elections might eventually have a benign result that was not originally envisioned by its sponsor, but little progress has been made in that direction over the last decade. Putting village elections in such perspective, this paper examines the economic, political and democratic dimensions of this electoral process of village elections as a new form of cooperation between the state and the peasantry.