Has Television Personalized Voting Behavior?

Scholars and political observers have suggested that television has “personalized” voting behavior in American presidential elections by encouraging citizens to cast ballots on the basis of candidate image and personality. Though an oft-heard assertion, little solid evidence exists that this is true, and the reinvigoration of partisanship and the persistence of ideological conflict suggest personalization may be less pervasive than supposed. In this paper, I use National Election Studies data to examine whether voters are more concerned with candidates’ personal characteristics now than they were at the outset of the television era. I find, however, that voters are no more likely today to mention candidate personality as a reason for their vote choice than they were in the 1950s and 1960s. Moreover, while personality affects voting behavior, its influence on candidate choice is not significantly larger than it was a half-century ago. The results are not contingent on exposure to television or political awareness and are insensitive to different measures of perceptions of candidate image. The findings are consistent with the resurgence of partisan voting in American elections and suggest that some concerns about TV’s effects on political judgment are exaggerated.

Like father,like son? Power and influence across two Gnassingbé presidencies in Togo

In personalized authoritarian systems, the death of a leader poses a serious challenge to regime survival. Togo, however, belongs to a small number of countries in which regime collapse has been avoided by the transfer of power to the deceased ruler’s son. But can the son simply pick up where the father left off? Combining a theoretically guided single case study with statistical network analysis, this article argues that hereditary succession involves both changes and continuities. While Gnassingbé Eyadema’s rule rested on repression, patronage, and a bizarre leadership cult, his son Faure Gnassingbé has partly adapted and reformulated these strategies. The quantitative part of the article is based on a novel data set that contains information on the biographical characteristics and interaction patterns of the deputies in the Togolese parliament. Using exponential random graph models (ERGMs), the article shows that people who have held important positions in the past or belong to the president’s ethnic group still play a significant role in the regime elite. The article not only presents detailed insights on a so far under-researched country, but also contributes to the wider literature by showing how mixed-method designs can further our understanding of authoritarian regimes.     

Prospect theory and presidential elections: Two cases from Yugoslavia and Serbia

Why do presidents in semi-presidential regimes sometimes call early elections? Is the behavior of incumbent presidents different from the behavior of presidential contenders when the former do not need to run for office but face the loss of parliamentary majority in a semi-presidential system? Prospect theory claims that agents make risky choices when facing a loss. Consequently, if incumbent presidents face a loss of majority in the parliament, they will call for early election to try to shore up or salvage the majority. To provide empirical evidence supporting this claim, prospect theory has been applied to the two presidential elections in Yugoslavia and Serbia in which two incumbent presidents, Slobodan Milo?evi? (2000) and Boris Tadi? (2012), had lost early presidential elections. The expected contribution of the paper is to deepen our understanding of how semi-presidential regimes resolve the problem of temporal rigidity and offer novel empirical data in support of the application of prospect theory in political science.     

Succession effects in presidential elections

What is the impact of ex-presidents on the electoral performance of their party's successor candidates for the office and how long after a president has left office are successor effects electorally significant? Mattei and Weisberg (1994) argue that successor effects are large primarily when the vice president runs for office immediately at the end of the term of the president under whom they served. Timeliness and the association between presidents and their vice presidents account for succession effects. This paper challenges the Mattei-Weisberg successor effects perspective, arguing that significant successor effects can be possible for non-vice presidential candidates and long after a president has left office. Using American National Election Study data, I add numerous successions to those Mattei and Weisberg investigated. Analysis finds that succession effects apply to non-vice presidential candidates. Further, some ex-presidents may influence voting decisions long after they left office. There is also a hint in these data that succession effects have climbed over time, because as polarization has increased, the linkage between presidents and their parties has tightened.     

外国继承权丧失制度比较研究

继承权丧失制度是继承法的一项重要制度,它具有惩恶扬善的重要功能,并起到维护和睦文明的婚姻家庭关系的重要作用。然而,我国继承法有关继承权丧失制度还存在某些缺陷,笔者拟在对外国继承权丧失制度进行较为全面的比较评析的基础上,借鉴其有益的立法经验,结合我国实际,提出一些完善立法的建议。     

转继承与夫妻财产制

作为经常发生的现象,转继承问题的解决在理论和司法实践中具有重要意义。但我国《继承法》并未对转继承问题做出规定,因此,转继承问题在法学理论界引起了争议。明确遗产的法律地位,分析转继承的适用范围,并结合我国的夫妻财产制的规定,才能正确的处理转继承问题。     

A Preliminary Study of Insect Succession in Al‐Ahsaa Oasis,in the Eastern Region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Rabbit carcass decomposition was examined in four seasons in Al‐Ahsaa Oasis. Decomposition rate was significantly faster in summer compared with other seasons. Fourteen insect species from four orders and seven families were recorded: Calliphoridae, Muscidae, Sarcophagidae, Formicidae, Histeridae, Dermestidae, and Tenebrionidae. Most of the fly maggots collected were Calliphoridae with only one species from both Muscidae and Sarcophagidae. Maggots of Calliphora vicina (R.‐D.) and Chrysomya albiceps (Wiedemann) colonized the carcasses in all seasons while both Ch. bezziana (Villeneuve) and Lucilia sericata (Meigen) were found in all seasons except for winter. Maggots of Chrysomya megacephala (F.) and Phormia regina (Meigen) were only collected in the summer and autumn, respectively. Four coleopteran species were collected: Hymenorus sp., Saprinus chacites (Illiger), Dermestes maculatus DeGeer and Blaps sp. One formicidian species, Pheidole megacephala (F.), was observed in all seasons. Insect richness was greater, and decomposition rate was faster in summer compared with other seasons.     

Succession,power-sharing and the development of representative institutions in medieval Europe

Historians have documented that in medieval Europe, bargaining over the loyalty of lay magnates and high clergy was most intense during successions and that this often forced monarchs to give political concessions. We argue that matters related to succession predict short-term power-sharing concessions by rulers but that – because they do not permanently alter the balance of power between ruler and elite – they only trigger lasting changes of political institutions if these changes are in the mutual interest of the ruler and the elite groups. It follows that successions are unlikely to have long-term effects on representative institutions but that they may consolidate the rules regulating succession (the succession order). Using the natural deaths of monarchs as an instrument for successions, we confirm these claims with a new dataset that includes fine-grained data on succession and parliament-like assemblies in 16 European polities between 1000 and 1600. These findings shed new light on the development of representative institutions in medieval Europe, on the changes in succession orders that brought about clear rules about primogeniture and on the political leeway of legislatures in authoritarian regimes more generally.     

Presidential Primary Videocassettes: How Candidates in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Primary Elections Framed Their Early Campaigns

The present study uses frame analysis and in-depth interviews to explore the presidential primary campaign videocassettes of Gary Bauer, Bill Bradley, George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, Al Gore, and John McCain. While the candidates used a variety of frames, all six videos shared one frame: mass media as supplier of candidate validation. Interviews with the producers of the videos confirmed data from the frame analysis and aided in understanding how and why the frames were used. The study lends insight into how the candidates chose to shape the images that they first presented to the public.     

Dominant party cohesion in comparative perspective: evidence from South Africa and Namibia

Africa's proliferation of dominant-party regimes is often regarded as an obstacle to democratization. Scholars and practitioners therefore face the task of understanding how and why constitutionally legitimate challenges to dominant party rule occur. This article asks: why do some presidential succession crises act as a catalyst to dominant party fragmentation when others do not? It argues that minority factions are more likely to defect from a dominant party when they have (1) been marginalized by the majority faction and (2) confidence in their mobilizational capacity. Factional purging is in turn traced to autocratic leadership and party under-bureaucratization, whilst high levels of factional self-confidence are linked to crises of dominance and the weakness of extant opposition parties.