MyOverseasVote: liberalism and extraterritorial citizenship

This article engages with the liberalist conception of extraterritorial citizenship in examining the pioneering attempt of the Malaysian diaspora to make a rights-based claim for extraterritorial voting. Using the case study of MyOverseasVote (MOV), a transnational advocacy group, this paper demonstrates how the Malaysian diaspora staked their constitutional claim as absent citizens and challenged the state’s definition of absent voters. The bottom-up reform is framed within the context of equalization of rights due to the salient ethnic element embedded in extraterritorial Malaysian citizenship. This liberalization of the external voting legislation has de-ethnicized but not equalized voting rights outside the country between publicly and privately employed citizens overseas. During the 13th General Election (GE13), Malaysia introduced a limited diaspora franchise conditioned upon territoriality and connectivity, affirming the continued relevance of territorial sovereignty.     

Rules,institutions and the economic vote: clarifying clarity of responsibility

Abstract

Institutions are thought to matter for vote choice, and work on economic voting is exemplary in this regard. The strength of the economic vote varies considerably cross-nationally and this seems to emanate from differences in the clarity of responsibility. Still, this conceptual frame, dominant in the field, appears to have some cracks. First, almost all work presents analyses of the economic vote in smaller, split samples of low- and high-clarity contexts separately. Second, the literature appears rather dispersed when the conceptual and empirical indicators are examined. The article attempts to overcome these limitations by analysing a large pool of democratic elections with a series of objective indicators. It investigates these indicators separately, and as components within two cumulative indices (institutional rules and power patterns). The results indicate that, even though there are indications of differences in the strength of the economic vote in high- and low-clarity contexts respectively, institutional rules or power patterns fail to significantly deflect the overall electoral impact of economic growth.     

The accountability effect of endorsements: A survey experiment

Do endorsements from incumbent politicians to co-partisans lead to more electoral accountability for the performance of the government? I use a randomized experiment embedded in a national survey conducted before the 2012 Mexican general election to examine the effect of endorsements by the outgoing president Felipe Calderón to the Senate candidates of his Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). Results show that among PAN identifiers, the incumbent vote is more tightly linked to the performance of the president when voters are exposed to the endorsement. I improve on the current standing of the accountability literature by showing that the relationship between an outgoing politician and the candidates of her party matters for electoral sanctioning. My findings imply that politicians’ strategic decisions have an effect on how voters assign responsibility: By nominating candidates without close ties to the endorser in cases of weak government performance, parties can use nominations strategically to diffuse responsibility.     

Failed expectations: Quality of government and support for populist parties in Europe

This article addresses an issue previously neglected in the research on support for populist parties: How do perceptions of the local quality of government (QoG) and local service delivery affect voters’ propensity to vote for a populist party? It argues that personal experience with poor QoG makes voters more likely to support populist parties. The argument highlights the interplay between supply and demand factors in explaining populist support and discusses why populist parties have been particularly successful in certain regions in Europe. A unique dataset from the Quality of Government Institute that surveys citizens’ perception of QoG in their area is used to estimate both individual‐ and regional‐level models of the link between perceived local QoG and populist support in Europe. The empirical results show a strong and robust association between within‐country variation in QoG and support for populist parties.     

Any Publicity or Good Publicity? A Competitive Test of Visibility- and Tonality-Based Media Effects on Voting Behavior

When examining media effects on voting intentions, scholars of political communication have either focused on visibility- or tonality-based effects. Our study compares these effect models, asking whether the explanations are complementary or competitive; it goes beyond previous studies by considering interactions between media cues and voters’ attitudes. We draw on panel survey data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) that is combined with content analysis data of the main evening news broadcast in Germany. Findings show that visibility- and tonality-based effects are similar in potency, but tone-based effects are more contingent on attitudes toward parties and candidates. Both types of cues can backfire: higher visibility and more positive tonality can have negative effects on some attitude groups, which is in part moderated by the expectations about government coalitions. We find that visibility and tonality are rather complementary cues that both influence voting behavior. Implications are discussed.     

The extra-territorial paradox of voting: the duty to vote in extra-territorial elections

The question of why individuals vote, the so-called “paradox of voting”, has been a crucial debate within political science, conceived deductively as an interaction between costs, benefits, and, as some argue, duties. This article situates the question of why individuals vote within the context of extra-territorial elections, focusing on how and why those who acquire citizenship kin-states participate in kin-state elections following citizenship acquisition, while continuing to reside outside of the kin-state. The article uses the case of newly acquired Romanian citizens in Moldova, who have never resided in nor intend to reside in Romania, to unpack whether, how, and why individuals acquiring Romanian citizenship in Moldova vote in Romanian elections. The article uses an interpretive and inductive approach to explore from the bottom up both the experiences of and motivations for political participation of extra-territorial citizens. The article finds, unexpectedly, how those acquiring Romanian citizenship in Moldova are motivated by a duty to participate. Overall, the article argues for a relational and reciprocal understanding of citizenship and voting, which focuses on the relationship between the kin-state, facilitating citizenship as a right, and the kin-citizen, performing their duty to vote.     

The empirical application of the spatial theory of voting in multiparty systems with random utility models

Spatial models of voting predominate in the formalization of political decisions and continue to be a growth industry in political science. But strict empirical applications of this theory have been rare. Only recently, conditional discrete choice models have been proposed to fill the gap between formal and empirical models and to predict the individual voting decision in multi-candidate/multiparty contests on the basis of the spatial model. This article highlights several flexible features of these models that are well known in transportation economics and applied marketing science but not yet discussed in the electoral studies community. Empirical illustrations are provided on the basis of (nested) multinomial logit.     

Economic voting in provincial elections: Revisiting electoral accountability in the Canadian provinces

ABSTRACT

We examine the outcomes of the provincial elections having been held in Canada since the Great Recession and compare them with outcomes from past decades. Given the severity of the 2008 financial crisis, we test for whether provincial governments’ electoral fortunes over the recent period have been negatively impacted by this important economic shock. Our analyses of aggregate-level provincial electoral outcomes: (1) confirm that provincial incumbent parties are held accountable for provincial economic conditions; (2) show that this provincial economic voting pattern has been heightened during the financial crisis; and (3) demonstrate that provincial incumbents also incur vote share losses when national economic conditions worsen and their respective family party is in power at the federal level, although this referendum voting pattern appears to have been unaffected by the financial crisis.     

Democracy Beyond Secrecy: Assessing the Promises and Pitfalls of Collective Voting

This paper assesses collective voting as a specific mode of democratic decision‐making and compares it to secret voting. Under collective voting, voters gather in one place and decide by the show of hands. We theorise two potential advantages and two disadvantages of collective voting so defined. We then draw on original survey data from one of the largest polities practising collective voting, the citizen assembly of the Swiss canton of Glarus. We find that both the promises and pitfalls of non‐secret voting are exaggerated. Non‐secret voting’s suspected pitfalls – social pressure and abstention – do not generally materialise in our sample, although for women they do appear to be relevant to some extent. However, the promises of collective voting – enabling cue‐taking and discursive bridging and bonding – are equally realised to a limited extent only.     

Is there such a thing as a Muslim vote?

This contribution explores to what extent there is such a thing as a distinct Muslim vote in flexible proportional list systems. We test in a new and reliable way whether the religious belonging and behavioural dimension of Muslim voters play a role in their decision-making process when casting preferential votes in a secular democracy. To achieve this, voter and candidate characteristics are modelled simultaneously in cross-classified multilevel analyses where the decision-making process of voters (the demand side) is studied while taking into account the list composition in terms of individual candidates (the supply side). We use data of an exit poll related to the local elections of 2018 in Belgium, especially at oversampled locations. The analyses show that voters who belong to Muslim faith are more likely to vote for Muslim candidates. Contrary, the behaviour dimension of Muslim voters – measured in mosque attendance - has no effect on voting primarily for Muslim candidates.