Primary Elections for Britain

The coalition's programme for government promises to fund 200 open postal primaries during the current Parliament, targeted at seats which have not changed hands for many years. The lessons from the two open postal primaries used in 2009 are that they will change the numbers and characteristics of those involved in choosing candidates, the criteria for selection and the type of candidates chosen. Much will remain unchanged. Primaries are unlikely to affect the controlling influence of party in the House. The limits to their number and duration will leave most safe seats unaffected and prevent the development of any new form of accountability. Primaries will provide some voters with intra‐party competition but inter‐party uncompetitiveness will remain the norm.     

城乡居民享有平等选举权的法律思考

"逐步实行城乡按相同人口比例选举人大代表"即城乡居民享有平等选举权,是对宪法确定的公民首项基本权利--"平等权"的实现,它符合宪法的规定与基本精神;其次,党中央的这一决策也说明了我国的现行<选举法>中"农村每一代表所代表的人口数四倍于城镇每一代表所带表的人口数"之规定有待进一步修改;城乡居民享有平等选举权符合我国现在和将来的现实需要.     

Do competitive districts get more political attention? Strategic use of geographic representation during campaign and non-campaign periods

MPs are elected as delegates of their electoral district to represent their constituents' interests. Geographical representation is considered a central quality indicator for legislative systems. Yet whether the strategic use of geographic representation is affected by tactical campaign considerations has received less attention. The availability of social media data on a fine-grained level allows us to fill this gap by studying the following question: To what extent do politicians strategically use geographic representation during electoral campaign and non-campaign times? I combine literature comparing campaign and non-campaign periods with studies on strategic incentives for MPs to geographic representation. Empirically, I rely on quantitative text-analytical tools to study German politicians’ tweets from the entire 19th legislative period (2017–2021). My findings have important implications for the geographic representation literature as they imply that MPs use geographic references strategically, especially during campaign periods. Prospective competitive districts receive substantially more political attention already during non-campaign periods, yet further amplified during electoral campaigns.     

我国侦查主体与侦查权的合理设置与配置

我国现行侦查主体设置与侦查权配置的二元化模式不符合国际"侦查主体一元化"的潮流,因此后者必然成为我国在此方面改革的借鉴。"检警一体化"的侦查模式由于其存在特定缺陷也难以与我国历史情况与现实国情契合,因此按"警察一体化"的侦查模式重新调整我国现有的检警关系成为我国对此改革的方向。独立、垂直的职务犯罪侦查局的设置可以将剥离出来的检察机关对职务犯罪的侦查权和纪委对党员干部涉嫌职务犯罪的调查权或称之为"准侦查权"合并吸纳,有利于对职务犯罪的实际预防、控制和惩处。     

The 2015 Regional Election in Italy: Fragmentation and Crisis of Subnational Representative Democracy

In May 2015, voters in seven Italian regions went to the polls to elect new regional councils and governments. The final election result was apparently similar to that of 2010: centre-left coalitions won in five out of seven regions, as in the previous election, leaving the remaining two to the centre-right. Yet behind this picture of stability, dramatic changes have occurred in the internal composition of regional coalitions, cross-party equilibriums and levels of participation. Generally, regional party-based democracy seems to be experiencing increasing fragmentation and a crisis of representation and legitimacy.     

Electoral institutions and campaigning in comparative perspective: Electioneering in European Parliament elections

This article develops and tests a number of competing expectations (institutional, party and individual) about what influenced the campaign activity of individual parliamentary candidates for the 2004 European Parliament elections. The principal interest is in the effects of variations in the design of electoral institutions across the Member States of the European Union. Based on the analysis, it is argued that an important distinction needs to be made between campaign effort and campaign goals, with electoral institutional factors having a more significant role over the latter.     

Explaining Electoral Reforms in Lithuania

This paper examines the numerous changes made to Lithuanian electoral laws between 1992 and 2010. It argues that the two dominant political blocs sought to avoid competition from smaller ‘challenger’ parties by reducing the proportionality of the mixed electoral system between 1992 and 2000. Despite such efforts, the number of effective parties increased and the parliamentary elections in 2000 resulted in a shift from a two-party system to a multiparty system. This created incentives for parties to ensure against future electoral exclusion by maintaining the vote aggregation rules, which had proven to allow for multipartism. This resulted in the relative stability of electoral rules between 2000 and 2010.     

Between Renewal and Stability: Party System Change from a Multi-Level Perspective in Brazil (1998–2018)

The growth of the far right and election results in Brazil are often associated with national or large-scale events. The multi-level features of these developments, namely party competition at the sub-national level, are overlooked in the literature. This article argues that changes in the Brazilian national party system – those observed from Bolsonaro's election, mainly – are rooted in sub-national political dynamics. Through a comparative and longitudinal analysis of multi-level executive and legislative elections, we find that, although there are distinct patterns of competition between the national-sub-national and within-country levels, this difference is not evident in volatility.     

Online versus offline: Exploring the link between how candidates campaign and how voters cast their ballot

The Internet is playing an increasingly important role in shaping citizens’ political experience. We turn to it to consume political news and, in some countries, to even cast our ballots at parliamentary elections. Leading the way in embracing Internet voting (i-voting) is Estonia where nearly half of the ballots cast during the 2019 parliamentary election were submitted online. Using original data from the 2019 Estonian Candidate Study, this paper explores the relationship between how candidates campaign and their electoral performance. It finds greater use of both offline and online campaign tools to contribute to higher vote shares as candidates win more traditional and i-votes. These positive effects are similar in size, in terms of candidates’ overall electoral performance as well as their ability to attract different types of votes. The results show not only that individual-level campaigns continue to matter, but that online campaigns have become as important as offline campaigns for candidates, and voters’ political activity often transcends the medium through which they receive political communication.     

Reinforcing or Breaking Party Systems? Internet Communication Technologies and Party Competition in Comparative Context

Many scholars speculate about the political implications of Internet proliferation. The Internet might, for example, open new channels of communication, which should benefit ideologically extreme and electorally small parties. On the other hand, the Internet might push party systems toward normalization, ultimately reinforcing the extant dominance of incumbent parties. We draw on data from 205 small and extreme parties in 35 countries and focus on both party- and system-level outcomes to investigate some of the most pressing research questions from this debate. We find that where party systems were previously concentrated or restrictive, Internet proliferation has no effect on votes for small and extreme parties. By contrast, in more permissive settings, Internet proliferation has had the small—but measurable—effect of driving up votes for these parties. At the level of the party system as a whole, however, we find little evidence that Internet proliferation increases either polarization or fragmentation.