Who wins the most when everybody wins? Predicting candidate performance in an authoritarian election

ABSTRACT

What explains the variation in vote shares received by candidates in single-party authoritarian elections where everybody wins? The scholarly literature has often ignored institutional variations, treated all authoritarian elections as similar, and explained the variation of vote shares as a consequence of clientelism, coercion or electoral fraud. We employ a unique data set for Cuba’s 2013 National Assembly election to show an alternative answer: even in authoritarian regimes, institutional settings shape voters’ behaviour and candidates’ strategies. When the number of candidates on the ballot equals the number of parliamentary seats and yet voters can express some preference among multiple candidates, valence can become a predictor of candidate performance. Voters reward high-quality politicians, but not incumbents or Communist Party members, while candidates have no incentives to actively distinguish themselves and converge toward the general support of the single united slate.     

The Personalization(s) of Politics: Israel, 1949–2003

The relationship between the United States and Iran has had an important influence on world affairs during the past two decades. Accordingly, the U.S. news media have an instrumental role in portraying U.S.‐Iran relations to the public. The Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis of 1979–1981, the TWA hijacking of 1985, the Irangate controversy of 1986–1987, and the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991 are examples of important media events that have impacted public opinion regarding U.S. policy toward Iran. This research analyzes government and print media portrayals of the Reagan administration's U.S.‐Iran policy during Irangate. Results supported the prediction that the print media would fulfill their “watchdog” function by providing more critical portrayals of the United States' policy toward Iran than the Tower Commission Report, an investigative document published by President Reagan's Special Review Board. Among the three leading newspapers analyzed, there was significant diversity in the reporting of U.S.‐Iran relations. Results indicate the Reagan administration's attempt to “spin” its version of Irangate did not successfully pressure the media to neglect their watchdog role. Although the Tower Commission Report was less critical of U.S. policy toward Iran than the print media, all four print media sources portrayed the Reagan administration's policy as a flawed approach that degenerated into trading arms for hostages. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

The More Fragmented the Better?—The Impact of Armed Forces Structure on Defection during Nonviolent Popular Uprisings

Authoritarian regimes frequently employ fragmentation to safeguard themselves against coups and reduce the power of the military apparatus. This article investigates the impact of structural coup-proofing in the setting of a nonviolent popular uprising that threatens the regime and its survival. It is argued that in such settings fragmentation can have unintentional consequences with respect to the question whether the army fulfills orders of repression or defects. If the security apparatus is highly divided, some armed organizations will seize the opportunity to defect and side with the protesters because the efficiency of counterbalancing decreases if more effective armed organizations are involved. This can be mainly explained through collective action problems that the security apparatus faces in such a setting. This article compiles data of nonviolent uprisings from 1975 to 2006 and data on armed forces structure for conducting a multivariate probit regression on the probability of defection. The findings indeed show a U-shaped relationship between armed forces fragmentation and the likelihood of defection during nonviolent mass uprisings. While security apparatuses with around two effective armed organizations display only a low probability of defection, minimally and highly fragmented forces indicate higher chances of defection from the ruling regime.     

民主治理与民主巩固——东南亚国家的政治发展困境

东南亚国家独立初期"民主试验"的失败及现阶段民主制度的"危机"和民主制度本身并没有本质的、必然的联系,民主制的发展困境是由于与民主制度相适应的民主治理方式未能有效建立,治理方式不能与民主体制相适应造成的。从"统治"到"治理"不仅是一种范式的变迁,也是国家治理方式的转换。未来东南亚国家的民主巩固进程将是一个艰巨的"双重民主化"进程即实现政治体制和管理方式的双重转型。     

Is Any Publicity Good Publicity? Media Coverage,Party Institutions,and Authoritarian Power-Sharing

Existing literature identifies nonofficial media as a tool for rulers to gather information from below. We argue that such media also help identify threats among elites. Motivated by profit, partially free media tend to cover politicians who challenge implicit norms of the regime. These political elites are perceived as threats to the power-sharing status quo, which leads peers to sanction them. We test this argument with evidence from the Chinese Communist Party’s intraparty elections of alternate Central Committee members in 2012 and 2007. With Bayesian rank likelihood models, we find that candidates who appeared more frequently in various partially free media received fewer votes from the Party Congress delegates, and this pattern is robust after accounting for a series of alternative explanations. Detailed case studies also show that low-ranked candidates have more partially free media coverage because they broke party norms.     

试析韩国的政治粉丝社团现象

以特定政治人为核心聚合起来的粉丝社团是韩国政党政治的新现象,在近十年的发展中对推动韩国政党政治发展发挥了重要作用。政治粉丝社团中,文化共享型与个人追随型社团政治色彩相对淡薄,而政党支援型、运动支援型等政治倾向型社团有着强烈的政治色彩,发挥着类政党的作用。年轻人的政治心理、政党有意推动、轰动效应、政治偏好、市民社会的发展是政治粉丝社团的成因。在政治生活中,这些社团发挥着宣传工具、党内制衡、代言工具和政治后备军的作用。同时,粉丝社团在发挥着政治造星功用的同时,也因过度竞争和论功行赏等试图影响政治的消极面而备受质疑。     

Balanced or Biased? Interest Groups and Legislative Lobbying in the European News Media

This article examines the coverage of legislative lobbying in European news media. The starting point thereby is that lobbying in the crowded European Union (EU)-level interest community is not only a struggle for direct access to policymakers, but that in order to realize policy goals many interest groups rely on political attention generated by the media. Our main research question is how media attention is skewed toward particular interests and which factors explain these varying levels of prominence. Our empirical analysis is based on a set of 125 legislative proposals adopted by the European Commission between 2008 and 2010. For all these cases we identified 379 interest organizations that made public statements, we coded the amount of media attention these organized interests gained, the type of statements they made as well as some key organizational features. While the aggregate levels of attention look pretty balanced, our evidence shows that media prominence is skewed toward particular types of interests; in particular that organized interests which oppose a proposed policy gain significantly higher levels of media attention.