Learning and Party Competition

Downs's (1957) analysis of political ideologies by means of a spatial analogy suggests that parties' efforts to attract votes lead them to adopt a median position. In this study, we consider a typology of two‐party competition based on two different learning environments, i.e. individual and social learning. Our results suggest that in the environment of population learning we have the median outcome, i.e. conventional, and in the one of individual learning we have the outcome of divergence.     

论民主的经济性

民主虽然是人民当家作主的权利或制度安排,但它拥有内在的经济性,因为不仅民主内涵和形式包含经济成分,而且民主具有经济功能,同时,民主还具有经济局限性。     

非法吸收公众存款罪公开性特征的具体认定

非法吸收公众存款罪的公开性是该罪认定上的难点,也是理论研究的薄弱环节,其中的相关问题应得到进一步明确。首先,公开性的本质是宣传对象的不特定性,即针对不特定多数的人进行宣传。其次,公开性与社会性存在交集和重叠,同时也各具独立价值。第三,在口头传播的性质认定上,应区分是否为集资人授意及集资人对集资信息的扩散持何种心态。第四,公开性不以虚假宣传为必要。     

Allocating Campaign Effort in Spain: Evidence from Four General Elections

Abstract

This paper analyses which districts are targeted by Spanish political parties in their electoral campaigns. We find that the major Spanish parties - PP and PSOE - mobilise districts where they are more likely to win a new seat or are in danger of losing one they already hold. The predicted closeness of the district race is more relevant in the smallest districts. We also find that Spanish parties mobilise their strongholds. We suggest that, apart from the pure office-seeking strategies, political finance motivations might also play a role in the mobilisation choices made by Spanish party elites.     

Come hell or high water: An investigation of the effects of a natural disaster on a local election

How is electoral support for incumbent candidates shaped by natural disasters? Do voters in districts newly recovering from a national disaster punish or reward incumbents for their response to the disaster when compared to their counterparts in unaffected districts? The City of Calgary is used here as a case study. On 20 June 2013, the Bow and Elbow rivers flooded in the Calgary, devastating 26 neighborhoods and displacing approximately 75,000 people, or 7 per cent of the city's population. Four months later, a municipal election was held. When analyzed as a natural experiment, results suggest that support for the incumbent mayor increased city-wide between the 2010 and the 2013 elections, but at a lower rate in areas that experienced residential flooding. However, the flood did not produce equivalent treatment and control groups, as flooded areas differ systematically from areas that were not flooded in ways key to the election outcome. When analyzed more conservatively, results show that the flood had no effect on incumbent support or voter turnout. Thus, this disaster introduces a note of caution into the literature examining the effects of natural disasters on electoral behavior.     

Explaining Electoral Violence in Serbia: fsQCA Analysis of Contentious Behavior in the Electoral Arena

The article focuses on an analysis of incidents of electoral violence in Serbia in the period of 1990–2014. The main objective is to identify potential sources of contentious behavior in the electoral arena and, using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), to select potential causal paths that can explain it. Theoretical discussion combined with the original data collected from OSCE monitoring reports open a space for the systematic assessment of the explanatory power of various arguments concerning electoral violence while discussing its sources and logic. The fsQCA analysis identifies two causal paths that explain the occurrence of the phenomenon in the country covering Milo?evi? and the post-Milo?evi? era.     

Image repair in the aftermath of inaccurate polling: How the news media responded to getting it wrong in 1948 and 2016

The US presidential elections of 1948 and 2016 produced surprise outcomes when the predicted winners ended up losing the election. Using image repair theory, this article explains the strategies the media used to repair their image in light of predicting the wrong winner. Using a qualitative analysis of news coverage that immediately followed the 1948 and 2016 presidential elections, this study finds that the media utilized similar image repair strategies of offering explanations for poor information, highlighting the media’s good reporting, diminishing the harm caused by the inaccurate predictions, and justifying the inaccurate predictions of both elections. However, the media responses in 1948 and 2016 differed greatly in tone and in the utilization of a new attack strategy to deflect criticism of the media itself. These strategies suggest that media use of image restoration is limited because of the unique societal expectations placed on the press, and that the media’s inaccurate 2016 predictions and subsequent attack strategies may have been contributed to the heightened criticism of mainstream news.     

美国与老挝1958年的补充选举

1954年日内瓦会议结束以后,美国开始关注老挝国内局势的发展,将老挝看作其在东南亚防御共产主义影响的重要缓冲地带,积极扶植符合其利益要求的代理人上台。美国为确保老挝保守势力取得1958年补充选举的胜利投入了大量的援助。尽管如此,选举结果却违背了美国的初衷,暴露了美国对老挝政策的先天不足。     

Parliamentary elections in Cambodia 1998

On 26 July 1998, Cambodia had a general election for the second time since the 1991 Paris Peace Accords ending the Civil War. The first elections took place in 1993 within the framework of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). The 1998 elections were organised by Cambodian institutions with the international community supplying financial and material help, and electoral advice.