The enfranchisement of resident aliens: variations and explanations

What explains the timing of the liberalization of citizenship laws? Although scholars have offered a number of competing explanations for differences among citizenship regimes, few have examined the timing of liberalization and retraction of rights for non-citizens. To investigate the timing of both liberalization and reversal, this study examines the historical expansion of voting rights for non-citizen residents (VRA). Given both the symbolic and substantive consequences of VRA, democracies may proceed slowly when liberalizing political rights and may retract them quickly. Two bodies of scholarship offer competing explanations. The “national resilience” thesis suggests that differences in cultural definitions of citizenry, political institutions, and social policies produce national citizenship regimes that evolve slowly. By contrast, the “policy constraints” thesis asserts that domestic institutions enact human rights norms that expedite convergence around a common set of political rights. This study tests these explanations by examining the timing of liberalization of VRA in 25 democracies between 1975 and 2010. It finds factors that drive the timing of liberalization differ from those that cause the reversal of rights. While policy constraints best explain the timing of liberalization, policy constraints interact with national resilience factors to explain the retraction of rights.     

Is compulsory voting habit-forming? Regression discontinuity evidence from Brazil

Voting in one election increases one's propensity to vote in the future. It remains unclear, however, whether this pattern holds when voting is compulsory – as is the case in a quarter of all democracies. Is compulsory voting habit-forming? I address this question using a regression discontinuity design and administrative turnout data from Brazil, where voting is voluntary at age 16 and compulsory at age 18. I find no evidence that compulsory voting instils voting habits. Instead, the evidence points to a first-time compulsory voting boost, which gradually dissipates as voters grow older. I show that targeted mobilisation of first-time compulsory voters is a plausible mechanism behind the turnout boost. Alternative explanations find less support in the data. The results clarify the scope conditions of prior research on voting habits, and have important implications for the debate over the second-order effects of compulsory voting.     

“Do perceptions of EMU alter clarity of responsibility? A comparison of German and Greek electorates”

The goal of this paper is to understand whether perceptions of supranationalisation of economic policy mitigate economic voting in the Eurozone. We focus on two countries with divergent performances in the Eurozone: Germany and Greece, and make use of a novel dataset, which contains all necessary items to test this hypothesis. Our comprehensive vote model shows that in both countries economic voting occurs. However, once we interact perceptions of EU responsibility with perceptions of economic performance, we obtain diverging results: in Germany, the weight of economic perceptions on vote increases when citizens assign a higher responsibility to the EU for the country's economic situation. This is the opposite of what the “blurring of responsibility” posits. On the contrary, Greek electors are in line with expectations of our main hypothesis. Moreover, in this country we also found support for the idea that only citizens with a high level of political sophistication are able to incorporate the distribution of responsibilities for the economic policy in their vote calculus. Our results suggest that the blurring of responsibility effect on the vote may not be systematic across the Eurozone.     

Moderate,extreme, or both? How voters respond to ideologically unpredictable candidates

Candidates and parties often face a choice between endorsing policies that appeal to their core constituencies or generate support from more diverse groups of voters. While the latter strategy may make overtures to a wider set of citizens, existing literature says little about how the overall mix of issue positions affects electoral support. We argue that candidates who endorse diverse sets of policy positions appear unpredictable to voters and incur subsequent electoral penalties. Using data from the 2006 congressional elections, we find that ideological predictability substantially increases electoral support at both the individual and aggregate levels and that voters perceive greater ideological congruence from more predictable candidates. Our results have important implications for candidate and party strategies and suggest that voters are responsive to the mean and the variance of candidates’ policy stances.     

On the mismeasurement of sincere and strategic voting in mixed-member electoral systems

Under mixed systems, voters cast two votes to elect the same legislative body: one vote for parties using proportional rules and one for candidates using majoritarian rules. Voters are said to cast straight-tickets if the candidate they vote for is of the same party as their proportional vote; otherwise, they are said to cast split-tickets. Split-ticket voting is commonly used as a measure of strategic voting as splitters are usually assumed to express their true preference in one vote but vote strategically in the other. This study challenges this practice showing that split-ticket voting does not necessarily indicate strategic voting, just as straight-ticket voting does not necessarily indicate a sincere vote. This result has wider consequences as it indicates that measuring strategic voting from observed behaviour can result in incorrect conclusions about vote choice.     

Blind spots in the party system: Spatial voting and issue salience if voters face scarce choices

Drawing on spatial models of political competition, this research investigates whether decision weights vary across groups of voters defined by their policy positioning in a two-dimensional space. Our analyses of electoral survey data from England, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland reveal that the economic and cultural dimensions of electoral competition are salient for the vote choice of most groups of voters. However, those voters who hold economically right and culturally libertarian preferences weigh their preferences on the economic dimension more and discount parties’ position on cultural issues when no party represents their configuration of preferences. Consequently, left parties are less able to attain votes of economically right but culturally libertarian voters for cultural policy reasons, when electoral choices are scarce, while right parties are successful in attaining votes based on both dimensions. As a result, significant representation gaps can occur.     

Back in Contention? The Conservatives' Electoral Prospects

This article assesses whether the Conservatives are likely to be serious contenders for power at the next British general election. First it assesses how well the party will have to do to 'win' the election. Second, it considers whether the record of the polls since 2005 suggests the party is capable of securing the necessary support. Third, the article assesses whether the ideological mood of the electorate has moved closer to the Conservatives since 2005. Finally it considers whether the image of the party has improved.
The Conservatives are likely to have to outpoll Labour by a considerable margin to become the largest party but their record in opinion polls suggests they could achieve this. The ideological mood of the electorate has moved closer to the party, while David Cameron is a relatively popular leader. But the party has still not fully restored its reputation for economic competence.     

论公司章程防御性条款的法律效力

英国《2006年公司法》将防御性条款纳入法律规制。作为一种保护特定股东权益的制度设计,防御性条款可以有多种类型。英国法中的防御性条款除不能反强制性规定,未经允许剥夺股东法定权利以及施加股东义务外,还要遵循普通法上的善意地为了公司整体利益原则。防御性条款在我国法律框架下有极大适用空间,结合现行法律和相关案例,可以对防御性条款的法律效力作出类型化分析。     

Putting Electronic Voting under the Microscope

Electronic voting entered the political arena some years ago, with some countries advocating its use, some countries trialling and then abandoning it and yet others preferring to preserve the status quo of paper‐and‐pencil voting within a voting booth. In this paper we present the pros and cons of electronic voting and propose a set of characteristics we think electronic voting systems should exhibit. We then briefly review some pertinent concerns, issues and worries. We conclude by introducing the Handivote system, an electronic voting system that supports voting by means of SMS messaging, and explain how it measures up in terms of our own specified characteristics.