The 2013 South Tyrolean Election: The End of SVP Hegemony

The results of the 2013 South Tyrolean elections, held on 27 October, caused major changes in the political system of the autonomy. For the first time since the Second World War the South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP) lost its absolute majority. While the German secessionist parties increased their electoral support, the Italian parties suffered heavy electoral losses, thus leading to an under-representation of Italian speakers in the political institutions. The election report shows how the electoral results affect the South Tyrolean system of ethnic proportional representation, which is characterized by an increasing asymmetry.     

The 2011 presidential election in Peru: a thorny moral and political dilemma

The 2011 presidential elections in Peru was the third one held in the post-Fujimori era. A perusal of the campaign's political dynamics reveals pervasive anti-democratic behaviours, attitudes and rhetoric on the part of key political actors, showcasing the degree to which Peru remains an unconsolidated, precarious democracy. The second round presented a moral and political dilemma insofar as two unsavoury candidates of highly dubious democratic credentials vied for the presidency: Ollanta Humala, a former army lieutenant burdened by accusations of human rights violations who, additionally, led or supported two military uprisings; and Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of a convicted and jailed dictator who unabashedly touted the legacy of her father's authoritarian regime and surrounded herself with tainted fujimoristas. The paradox of this undesirable electoral outcome, which can be read as a popular rebuke of the status quo, is that it took place in the Latin American country posting the fastest economic growth over the past decade.     

Do party leadership contests forecast British general elections?

When assessing election forecasts, two important criteria emerge: their accuracy (precision) and lead time (distance to event). Curiously, in both 2010 and 2015 the most accurate forecasts came from models having the longest lead time—albeit at most 12 months. Can we increase the lead time further, supposing we tolerate a small decrease in accuracy? Here, we develop a model with a lead time of more than 3 years. Our Party Leadership Model relies on the votes of MPs when selecting their party leader. We assess the forecasting quality of our model with both leave-one-out cross-validation and a before-the-fact forecast of the 2019 general election. Compared to both simple forecasting methods and other scientific forecasts, our model emerges as a leading contender. This result suggests that election forecasting may benefit from developing models with longer lead times, and that party leaders may influence election outcomes more than is usually thought.     

When does inequality demobilize? New evidence from the American states

Income inequality has been rising throughout the industrialized world, particularly in the United States. This long been thought to depress turnout, but extant research has yielded mixed findings. Here, I argue that the inequality-turnout relationship is conditional, depending crucially on election salience. I test this by using three decades (1984–2014) of panel data from the U.S. states and by leveraging the fixed and exogenous occurrence of presidential (higher-salience) and midterm (lower-salience) elections. Overall, I find a negative and statistically significant relationship between income inequality and voter turnout in midterm election years, but a substantively small and non-significant relationship in presidential election years. I attribute this to the ability of presidential contests, relative to midterms, to counteract the demobilizing influence of high inequality, by piquing voters’ interest and activating citizens who would otherwise abstain. Overall, these findings help us to better understand of the politics of electoral participation in an era of high, and rising economic inequality.     

Coattails and spillover-effects: Quasi-experimental evidence from concurrent executive and legislative elections

Concurrent elections are widely used to increase turnout. We theorize and show empirically how concurrency affects electoral outcomes. First, concurrency increases turnout and thereby the participation of peripheral voters. Second, in combined elections, one electoral arena affects the other. In our case of majoritarian executive elections concurrent to proportional representation (PR) legislative elections, the centripetal tendency of majoritarian elections colors off to the concurrent PR race. Third, concurrency also entails spillovers of the incumbency advantage of executive officeholders to the concurrent legislative race. Drawing on quasi-random variation in local election timing in Germany, we show that concurrency increases turnout as well as council votes for the incumbent mayor's party and centrist parties more generally, with slightly more pronounced gains for the political left. As a consequence, concurrent elections consolidate party systems and political power by leading to less fragmented municipal councils and more unified local governments.     

The Europeanization of national elections. The role of country characteristics in shaping EU issue voting

Research has shown that voting in European elections is affected by domestic politics. However, in the last years, and particularly after the European debt crisis, also the EU has gained relevance and salience in national politics. In this paper we address the Europeanization of national elections and assess to what extent the characteristics of countries condition the intensity of EU issue voting. Using data from the European Election Studies and the Comparative Manifestos Project, our results demonstrate the importance of congruence between citizens' and parties’ positions on the EU for the individual vote on the national level and show how this varies across countries. We provide evidence that EU issue voting is more intense in countries with more political influence in the EU as well as in countries that are net contributors to EU funds.     

Do populist values or civic values drive support for referendums in Europe?

Representative democracy gives voters the right to influence who governs but its influence on policy making is only indirect. Free and fair referendums give voters the right to decide a policy directly. Elected representatives usually oppose referendums as redundant at best and as undermining their authority at worst. Democratic theorists tend to take electing representatives as normal and as normatively superior. The nominal association of popular decision making and populism has strengthened this negative view. Public opinion surveys show substantial support for holding referendums on important issues. Two major theories offer contrasting explanations for popular support for referendums; they reflect populist values or a commitment to the civic value of participation. This innovative paper tests an integrated model of both theories by the empirical analysis of a 17-country European survey. There is substantial support for all three civic hypotheses: referendum endorsement is positively influenced by attitudes towards participation, democratic ideals and whether elected representatives are perceived as responsive. By contrast, there is no support for populist hypotheses that the socioeconomically weak and excluded favour referendums and minimal support for the effect of extreme ideologies. The conclusion shows that most criticisms of referendums also apply to policy making by elected representatives. While referendums have limits on their use, there is a democratic argument for holding such ballots on major issues to see whether or not a majority of voters endorse the choice of their nominal representatives.     

Argentina's Landmark 2003 Presidential Election: Renewal and Continuity

This article provides an analysis of the political and socioeconomic context of the April 2003 presidential elections, focusing particularly on the campaign platforms of candidates, the outcome of the first round and the election's consequences for the party system. The election's results were far reaching in many respects. Argentina's longstanding two-party system came to an end with the virtual vanishing of the Radical party (UCR) at the national level. An evolved political culture resulted in new, more rigorous criteria for the selection of candidates. Finally, new political parties (MNR and ARI) emerged that could conceivably improve the quality of democratic governance in the future. In short, the 2001–2002 crisis fostered a significant degree of political renewal. Contrary to some predictions, however, the societal rejection of political parties did not result in either the complete demolition of the party system or the wholesale renovation of the political class. In particular, the Peronist party showcased its staying power and uncanny ability to adapt to new political environments.     

Piercing the Incumbency Syndrome: Ghana’s Democratic Transition in 2017

Ghana’s political landscape changed dramatically in 2017, with the election of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo as president. Ghana’s political transition in 2017 raises new insights into presidential recruitment and politics in Ghana. The purpose of this article is to examine the 2016 elections within the spectrum of the politics of Ghana’s presidential recruitment. This article discusses the hurdles that were surmounted by the opposition New Patriotic Party party, in unseating the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC) party. The author coins the term ‘the John Syndrome’ to highlight the mythology held by some commentators that Akufo Addo could not be elected president, because his name is not ‘John’. Discussions about intra-party squabbles that resulted in the loss of NDC’s incumbency are provided. The article concludes that Akufo Addo’s presidency symbolises a de-mythologisation of ‘the John Syndrome’. The perception that Akufo Addo saved the nation in 2012 was his major weapon in piercing John Mahama’s incumbency. The demise of the NDC is likely to create an intra-party shift in favour of the party’s founder.     

Issue framing and electoral violence in Ghana: a conceptual analysis

Ghana has conducted several successful elections since 1992, but the country continues to face many threats of widespread violence due to the recurrent nature of micro-level electoral violence and the existence of vulnerabilities such as political patronage, politics of exclusion, winner-takes-all electoral system and ethnic cleavages. While these factors have been used to explain the causes of electoral violence, issue framing by political elites and its connection to electoral violence have not been adequately examined. To better understand this phenomenon, this article draws on the concept of framing to underscore the argument that issue framing and reframing by political elites tend to shape micro-level electoral violence in Ghana.