Participación política de los migrantes. Reflexiones sobre la extensión de la ciudadanía en Argentina

Political participation for both, foreigners living in Argentina as well as nationals living abroad, is the topic of this paper. Through legislation, both groups have limited, in whole or in part, voting rights. An empirical study is carried out in order to identify that discrimination. The study of the legal framework allows us to verify whether or not migrants are considered political actors, empowered to participate actively in public life, and become part of the common will. This review reveals that there is a heterogeneous landscape of the legislative framework that enables the vote in national, provincial and local elections. It is argued that restricting citizenship to nationality or residence is a simple and unrealistic approach to contemporary human mobility. An open, inclusive and flexible citizenship is more consistent with a true democratic order.     

Voting for locals: Voters’ information processing strategies in open-list PR systems

While most of the literature on information shortcuts in open-list PR systems focuses on the importance of ballot position effects, the influence of a candidate’s localness has widely been ignored by existing studies. In this paper, I address this research gap and argue that voting patterns in open-list PR systems are more versatile than existing research would suggest. By analyzing a special characteristic of the open-list PR system employed in the parliamentary elections of Hamburg, it is shown that a large portion of voters chooses to vote for local candidates irrespective of the ballot position of the candidate. The paper further controls for factors conditioning the effect and finds that it remains strong even after taking them into consideration. The results have important implications for the representativeness of open-list PR systems, ballot paper design, as well as for our understanding of voters’ decision making process.     

Is the Future of Electoral Reform Local?

The Electoral Reform Society has recently published two reports putting the case for electoral reform in local government. These suggest acceptance, in the wake of defeat in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, that the group's ultimate goal of change to the Westminster electoral system is unlikely to be fulfilled soon and that a more gradual strategy is therefore needed. This paper examines this shift by asking three questions. First, is Westminster electoral reform really a dead letter? Second, is local electoral reform more likely—and, if so, just how much more likely? Third, would local electoral reform matter in itself?     

A broken system? Examining the perilous state of quality assurance in crime scene practice

Quality assurance in crime scene practice is an underdeveloped and underexamined field despite the cruciality attributed to scene work in achieving criminal justice goals. Formulation of robust strategies has been a shortcoming of oversight bodies, with a marked history of failure to address scene-specific requirements. This paper explores quality assurance mechanisms in the United Kingdom (UK) in order to uncover the longstanding status quo, and sustained challenges facing quality control regimes both on an organisational and personal level. Recommendations on a change in policy, implementation and philosophy are examined to assist with the formulation of effective quality assurance schemes in crime scene practice and align it closer to its laboratory counterparts.     

Electing Mayors with the Supplementary Vote Method: Evidence from Norway

Both Norway and England have used the supplementary vote (SV) method to elect mayors. SV was intended to elect mayors with a broad popular mandate, and deemed easy for voters to use. Previous research on English mayoral elections focusing on the supply side of the elections has found that voters supporting minority candidates with their first vote face difficulties using the optional second vote to choose among the remaining two top-candidates in municipalities where there are many candidates in the race. A close race, on the other hand, seems to give voters a helping hand in making this choice. Drawing on these findings, we link data on the 48 Norwegian mayoral races to survey data to further explore how the supply side of the elections and individual voter resources affect effective voting and use of the optional second vote. We use both standard logistic regression and multi-level models as statistical tools. The result reveals that 27 out the 48 elected mayors in Norway came out as majority winners (more than 50 per cent of the votes). The analysis suggests that the supply side of the elections is of minor importance for whether voters use their second vote or not. The probability of using the second vote is reduced by age, and voters who claim to understand how the electoral system works use the second vote more frequently. The analysis also reveals considerable variation in the number of first and second votes for the top two candidates (effective votes) between municipalities, and the results suggest that this variability may be explained partly by the closeness of the elections. Voters in municipalities with competitive mayoral races are more likely to vote effectively than voters in municipalities with less competitive elections. At the individual level party members are more likely to vote ineffectively.     

Institutions and Vote Unity in Parliaments: Evidence from 33 National Chambers

The paper looks at the relationship between institutions and vote unity in national parliaments with the help of a large data set of votes from 33 national parliaments. The tests run are the first to confirm empirically the relationship between vote of confidence procedure and vote unity. The paper also provides a theoretical explanation for why the existence of the confidence procedure influences vote unity despite being used only rarely. The vote of confidence influences votes through the development of control mechanisms as well as the selection of party members who are more ideologically united. This study also challenges the view that electoral rules which make candidates individually accountable to voters necessarily lead to more vote defections. The findings suggest that higher personal accountability decreases vote unity only if party leaders do not control candidate nomination. Parties that rely on government finance for campaigns are also more united.     

Increasing Representative Accountability through Electoral Laws: The Consequences of the 2008 Romanian Electoral Reform

The paper tests the effects of the 2008 Romanian electoral reform on the behaviour of MPs with the help of personal interviews conducted post reform. The reform was meant to make MPs more responsive to the needs of constituents, which in turn should lead to more constituency input in the legislative process, while at the same time yielding proportional results. The paper finds that there are few channels for the transmission of constituents' needs to MPs, and the existing channels are used for petty requests that have little to do with the legislative procedure. This in turn encourages the development of clientelistic ties between representatives and voters, which benefit wealthier candidates. The study also finds that although the new system translates votes into seats closely, small parties may still be disadvantaged because of what Duverger (1954 Duverger, M. (1954). Political parties: Their organization and activity in the modern state, New York, NY: John Wiley. [Google Scholar]. Political parties: Their organization and activity in the modern state. New York: John Wiley) calls the psychological aspects of the wasted vote problem.     

The quality of referendum debate: The UK's electoral system referendum in the print media

This paper analyses the quality of debate surrounding the UK's 2011 electoral reform referendum as represented in the print media. It first considers how debate quality in the context of a referendum campaign may best be conceptualized. It then uses content analysis of media coverage to investigate three aspects of that debate: its quantity; the balance between Yes and No arguments; and the quality of reason-giving. It finds that the quantity of debate was comparable to other recent electoral reform referendums. Coverage was predominantly, but not overwhelmingly, hostile to change. The different indicators of the quality of reason-giving present a mixed picture. The paper concludes by considering how the analysis could be extended through further comparison with other cases.