Compulsory voting and ethnic diversity increase invalid voting while corruption does not: an analysis of 417 parliamentary elections in 73 countries

Invalid voting, meaning blank and spoiled ballots, is a regular phenomenon in democracies around the world. When its share is larger than the margin of victory or greater than the vote share of some of the large parties in the country, invalid voting becomes a problem for democratic legitimacy. This article investigates its determinants in 417 democratic parliamentary elections in 73 countries on five continents from 1970 to 2011. The analysis shows that enforced compulsory voting and ethnic fragmentation are strong predictors for invalid voting while corruption has less impact. Our findings suggest that the societal structure is crucial in understanding invalid voting as a problem for democratic legitimacy because greater social diversity seems to lead to either a greater rate of mistakes or lesser attachments of social groups to the democratic process. Thus, rising levels of invalid voting are not only concerning in themselves but also for the divisive factors driving them.     

Integrating Organizational Justice and Affect: New Insights, Challenges, and Opportunities

Building on the foundation offered by Cropanzano et al. in their recent book titled Social Justice and the Experience of Emotion (Cropanzano et al. in Social justice and the experience of emotions, Routledge, New York, 2011), we argue that further integrating the literatures on organizational justice and affect has the potential to create important insights that can further our understanding of both literatures. In order to capitalize on these opportunities, however, we argue that justice scholars must increase the clarity of our constructs, address critical gaps in the literature, and question underlying assumptions in the field as well as within the paradigms that have traditionally been adopted to explore justice issues. We propose a number of research avenues that can not only facilitate our understanding of organizational justice by addressing challenges and gaps in the literature, but can also help further integrate the organizational justice and affect literatures. We conclude by discussing methodologies and approaches that can help organizational justice researchers to explore these new research opportunities.     

Gendered Justice Gaps in Bosnia–Herzegovina

A gendered reading of the liberal peacebuilding and transitional justice project in Bosnia–Herzegovina raises critical questions concerning the quality of the peace one hopes to achieve in transitional societies. By focusing on three-gendered justice gaps—the accountability, acknowledgement, and reparations gaps—this article examines structural constraints for women to engage in shaping and implementing transitional justice, and unmasks transitional justice as a site for the long-term construction of the gendered post-conflict order. Thus, the gendered dynamics of peacebuilding and transitional justice have produced a post-conflict order characterized by gendered peace and justice gaps. Yet, we conclude that women are doing justice within the Bosnian–Herzegovina transitional justice project, and that their presence and participation is complex, multilayered, and constrained yet critical.     

Parliamentary scrutiny of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy

Abstract

This paper analyses under what conditions parties engage in parliamentary scrutiny of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. With insights from comparative literature on parliamentary oversight, two main incentives are identified. On the one hand, opposition parties initiate scrutiny to reduce their information asymmetry vis-à-vis the government; on the other hand, coalition parties use parliamentary scrutiny to control their partners. Empirically, the article uses information on scrutiny activities in six EU member states (Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, United Kingdom) covering 13 years and 21 governments. The findings suggest that opposition parties scrutinise the government if they have access to strong oversight instruments. In contrast, the strength of oversight instruments is not important for coalition partners. They resort to means of scrutiny if the leading minister is weak. Coalitions with a greater number of parties engage in scrutiny less often. Moreover, scrutiny is especially observed in questions with more direct distributional consequences (‘intermestic’ issues).     

The contested spaces of civil society in a plural world: norm contestation in the debate about restrictions on international civil society support

Civil society organizations are facing increasing political restrictions all over the world. Frequently, these restrictions apply to the foreign funding of NGOs and thus curtail the space for external civil society support, which, since the 1990s, has become a key element in international democracy and human rights promotion. This so-called ‘closing space’ phenomenon has received growing attention by civil society activists, policymakers and academics. Existing studies (and political responses), however, neglect the crucial normative dimension of the problem at hand: As we show, the political controversy over civil society support is characterized by norm contestation, and this contestation reveals competing perceptions of in/justice and touches upon core principles of contemporary world order. Taking this dimension into account is essential if we are to academically understand, and politically respond to, the ‘closing space’ challenge. It is also highly relevant with regard to current debates on how to conceptualize and construct order in a world that is plural in many regards and in which liberal norms are fundamentally contested. Empirically, the paper combines an assessment of the global debate about closing space in the UN Human Rights Council with an analysis of a specific controversy over the issue in US-Egyptian relations.     

Beyond contestation: conceptualizing negotiation in democracy promotion

ABSTRACT

This article presents an analytical framework that guides the contributions to this special issue and, in general terms, aims at enabling a systematic investigation of processes of negotiation in the international promotion of democracy. It first briefly introduces the rationale for studying democracy promotion negotiation, offers a definition, and locates the general approach within the academic literature, bringing together different strands of research, namely studies of negotiation in international relations as well as research on democratization and democracy promotion. The larger part of the article then discusses key concepts, analytical distinctions and theoretical propositions along the lines of the three research questions that are identified in the introduction to this special issue. More specifically, the article (1) offers a typology that facilitates a systematic empirical analysis of the issues that are discussed in democracy promotion negotiations; (2) takes initial steps towards a causal theory of democracy promotion negotiation by identifying and discussing a set of parameters that can be expected to shape such negotiations; and (3) introduces key distinctions and dimensions that help guide empirical research on the output and outcome of negotiations in democracy promotion.     

Vetoing and inaugurating policy like others do: evidence on spatial interactions in voter initiatives

A sizeable literature studies strategic interactions between governments. In this paper, we ask whether, in the presence of direct democratic institutions, voters’ actions in vetoing a decision or inaugurating a policy by a binding initiative in their jurisdiction have spillover effects on the actions of voters in neighboring jurisdictions. We collect (and make available) data on 3300 initiatives in German towns from 2002 to 2014 and match these to panel data on the towns’ sociodemographic and fiscal characteristics. We apply an instrumental variables approach and find that a jurisdiction’s probability of hosting an initiative is positively driven by the neighbors’ direct democratic activity. The size of the estimated average effect peaks around a 20 km neighborhood—where a standard deviation change of neighbors’ activity increases the probability of hosting an initiative by 5 percentage points—then gradually declines and fades away after around 60 km. This effect is driven by spillovers in similar policy areas and by successful initiatives, and is stronger in towns with relatively more information flows (measured by newspaper consumption and commuter flows).     

Five Ways to Make a Difference: Perceptions of Practitioners Working in Urban Neighborhoods

This article responds to and develops the fragmented literature exploring intermediation in public administration and urban governance. It uses Q‐methodology to provide a systematic comparative empirical analysis of practitioners who are perceived as making a difference in urban neighborhoods. Through this analysis, an original set of five profiles of practitioners—enduring, struggling, facilitating, organizing, and trailblazing—is identified and compared. This research challenges and advances the existing literature by emphasizing the multiplicity, complexity, and hybridity, rather than the singularity, of individuals perceived as making a difference, arguing that different practitioners make a difference in different ways. The authors set out a research agenda, overlooked in current theorization, that focuses on the relationships and transitions between the five profiles and the conditions that inform them, opening up new avenues for understanding and supporting practice.     

Disclosure of child sexual abuse: expressed emotions and credibility judgments of a child mock victim

Both lay persons and professionals believe that the emotions displayed by a child witness during disclosure of sexual abuse are a factor of importance when judging the child's credibility. Unfortunately, not all children display emotions according to expectations, leading to misjudgments, and possible miscarriage of justice. In the present study, we examined how lay people's credibility judgments were influenced by a child's displayed emotions during the disclosure of sexual abuse. Participants (n?=?119), viewed video recordings of a mock police interview of an 11-year-old child actor disclosing sexual abuse, displaying one of four emotional expressions (angry, sad, neutral, and positive). Results showed that participants were strongly influenced by the emotions displayed; in particular, the display of strong negative emotions (anger) or positive emotions during disclosure significantly reduced judged credibility. The credibility ratings predicted the participant? judgments of the defendant's guilt and the willingness to pass a guilty vote in a hypothetical trial.     

Threshold Insurance Voting in PR Systems: A Study of Voters’ Strategic Behavior in the 2010 Swedish General Election

This study investigates strategic voting for small parties in proportional representation systems, in previous work sometimes referred to as threshold insurance voting (Cox, 1997). Starting from theories of rational voting (Downs, 1957), three conditions for threshold insurance voting are developed: the voter considers potential government outcomes, votes for a party at risk of falling below an electoral threshold, and votes for another party than his or her most preferred one. The conditions are tested on the case of the 2010 Swedish general election. Using extensive data material and a conditional logit model of vote choice, the results show that in this election voters cast strategic votes for at least one of the small parties, the Christian Democrats which was included in the incumbent government coalition.